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Russia launched a Christmas Day attack on Ukraine’s energy system, leaving more than half a million consumers without heat, water and electricity.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the 13th large-scale attack on the country’s grid in 2024 was “deliberate” and not a coincidence. “What could be more inhuman than that?” He wrote in X.
About 50 of the 70 missiles fired in the attack were intercepted, and a “significant” portion of the more than 100 attack drones were deployed, Zelensky added.
After switching to the Western Gregorian calendar last year, this year Ukrainians marked Christmas Day on December 25 for the second time. The decision to stop celebrating Christmas on January 7 in line with the Orthodox calendar was taken by Kiev to break Russian influence.
The governor of Ukraine’s eastern Kharkiv region, Oleh Siniehubov, told Ukraine’s National TV News that the attack left more than half a million consumers without heat, water and electricity.
Temperatures are near freezing across Ukraine.
In the west and south of the country, heating supplies were also cut off in some areas of Ukraine’s Ivano-Frankivsk and Dnipropetrovsk regions.
Ukraine’s energy grid operator, Ukrainergo, urged consumers to limit usage by not turning on multiple appliances at once, adding that the system was still recovering from the Russian attack earlier on December 13.
Ukraine’s largest private energy company, DTEK, said its power stations were damaged and one of its long-term employees was killed.
Ukraine’s foreign minister, Andriy Sibiha, told X that the attack reflected a response from Russian President Vladimir Putin “who spoke of an illusory ‘Christmas truce’.”
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said last week that Zelensky had rejected offers of a cease-fire and prisoner exchange on Orthodox Christmas on January 7.
Ukraine denied that such a proposal was ever on the table, asking Hungary to “refrain from manipulation” of the war. On Friday, Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hyorhi Tykhyi described it as a “PR, a move” by Orban.
