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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy stated the attack, the thirteenth large-scale assault of 2024 on the nation’s grid, was “deliberate” and never a coincidence. “What might be extra inhuman?” he wrote on X.
About 50 of the 70 missiles fired within the attack had been intercepted, together with a “vital” portion of the greater than 100 attack drones deployed, Zelenskyy added.
This yr Ukrainians marked Christmas Day on December 25 for the second time, after switching to the western Gregorian calendar final yr. The choice to cease celebrating Christmas on January 7 in keeping with the Orthodox calendar was made by Kyiv to interrupt with Russian affect.
Oleh Syniehubov, governor of Ukraine’s japanese Kharkiv area, instructed Ukraine’s nationwide TV information that the attack had left greater than half one million customers with out heating, water and electrical energy.
Temperatures throughout Ukraine are round freezing level.
Heating provides had been additionally reduce in some areas of Ukraine’s Ivano-Frankivsk and Dnipropetrovsk areas, within the west and south of the nation.
Ukraine’s energy grid operator, Ukrenergo, urged customers to restrict consumption by not switching on a number of home equipment without delay, including that the system was nonetheless recovering from the earlier Russian attack on December 13.
Ukraine’s largest non-public energy firm, DTEK, stated that its energy stations had been broken and certainly one of its long-term staff killed.
Ukraine’s international minister, Andriy Sybiha, stated on X that the attack displays Russian president Vladimir Putin’s response to “those that spoke about illusionary ‘Christmas ceasefire’.”
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán stated final week that Zelenskyy had rejected his proposal for a ceasefire and prisoner trade on Orthodox Christmas, January 7.
Ukraine denied that such a proposal was ever on the desk, asking Hungary to “chorus from manipulations” relating to the warfare. On Friday, Heorhii Tykhyi, spokesperson for Ukraine’s International Ministry, described it as “PR, a transfer” by Orbán.
