By JOHN LEICESTER, Associated Press
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — European officials are scrambling to assist Ukraine stay warm and keep functioning through the bitter winter months, pledging Friday to send more support that may mitigate the Russian military’s efforts to show off the warmth and lights.
Nine months after Russia invaded its neighbor, the Kremlin’s forces have zeroed in on Ukraine’s power grid and other critical civilian infrastructure in a bid to tighten the screw on Kyiv. Officials estimate that around 50% of Ukraine’s energy facilities have been damaged within the recent strikes.
France is sending 100 high-powered generators to Ukraine to assist people get through the approaching months, French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna said Friday.
She said Russia is “weaponizing” winter and plunging Ukraine’s civilian population into hardship.
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British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly, arriving Friday in Kyiv for an unannounced visit, said a promised air-defense package, which Britain valued at 50 million kilos ($60 million), would help Ukraine defend itself against Russia’s bombardments.
“Words aren’t enough. Words won’t keep the lights on this winter. Words won’t defend against Russian missiles,” Cleverly said in a tweet concerning the military aid.
The package includes radar and other technology to counter the Iran-supplied exploding drones that Russia has used against Ukrainian targets, especially the ability grid. It comes on top of a delivery of greater than 1,000 anti-air missiles that Britain announced earlier this month.
“As winter sets in, Russia is continuous to attempt to break Ukrainian resolve through its brutal attacks on civilians, hospitals and energy infrastructure,” Cleverly said.
Russian officials have claimed they’re hitting legitimate targets. However the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights on Friday expressed his shock on the depth of civilian suffering brought on by the bombing, amid broader allegations of abuses.
“Hundreds of thousands are being plunged into extreme hardship and appalling conditions of life by these strikes,” Volker Türk said in an announcement Friday. “Taken as a complete, this raises serious problems under international humanitarian law, which requires a concrete and direct military advantage for every object attacked.”
The U.N. humanitarian office also chimed in with its concerns. “Ukraine is popping increasingly cold without power, without regular water supply and without heating,” Jens Laerke, a spokesman for the office, said Friday.
He said the worldwide body and its partners were sending lots of of generators to Ukraine to assist the federal government there in its efforts to maintain people warm and maintain essential services, equivalent to health care. The World Health Organization said it’s sending generators to hospitals.
Cleverly’s visit got here a day after European officials launched a scheme called “Generators of Hope,” which calls on greater than 200 cities across the continent to donate power generators and electricity transformers.
The generators are intended to assist keep essential Ukrainian facilities running, providing power to hospitals, schools and water pumping stations, amongst other infrastructure.
Generators may provide only a tiny amount of the energy that Ukraine will need throughout the cold and dark winter months.
However the comfort and relief they supply is already evident, as winter begins in earnest and power outages occur recurrently. The whine and rumble of generators is becoming commonplace, allowing stores which have them to remain open and Ukraine’s ubiquitous coffee shops to maintain serving hot drinks that maintain a semblance of normality.
Despite strong wind, rain, sub-zero temperatures at night, icing and broken power lines, greater than 70% of Ukraine’s electricity requirements were being met on Friday morning, the country’s state power grid operator Ukrenergo said in an announcement.
The electricity supply has been not less than partially restored in all regions of Ukraine, and the country’s energy grid was once more connected to that of the European Union, the pinnacle of the state power grid said on Friday.
Volodymyr Kudrytskyi, CEO of Ukrenergo, added that despite that progress, about half of Ukrainian residents proceed to experience disruption. He added that each one three of Ukraine’s nuclear plants situated in areas controlled by Kyiv have resumed operation.
“In a single to 2 days, nuclear power plants will reach their normal scheduled capability, and we expect that it can be possible to transfer our consumers to a planned shutdown (regime) as an alternative of emergency (blackouts),” Kudrytskyi said on Ukrainian TV.
Ukrainian authorities are opening hundreds of so-called “points of invincibility” — heated and powered spaces offering hot meals, electricity and web connections. Ukrainian President Zelenskyy said late Thursday that nearly 4,400 such spaces have opened across many of the country.
He scoffed at Moscow’s attempts to intimidate Ukrainian civilians, saying that was the Russian military’s only option after a string of battlefield setbacks. “Either energy terror, or artillery terror, or missile terror — that’s all that Russia has dwindled to under its current leaders,” Zelenskyy said.
Elsewhere, Ukrainian officials and energy staff continued their push to revive supplies after a nationwide barrage Wednesday left tens of tens of millions without power and water.
Kyiv’s mayor Vitali Klitschko said Friday morning that heating was back on in a 3rd of the capital’s households, but that half of its population still lacked electricity.
Writing on Telegram, Klitschko added that authorities hoped to offer all consumers in Kyiv with electricity for a period of three hours on Friday, following a pre-set schedule.
As of Friday morning in Kharkiv, all residents of Ukraine’s second-largest city had had their electricity supplies restored, but greater than 100,000 within the outlying region continued to see interruptions, the regional governor said.
Within the south, authorities in the town of Mykolayiv said that running water was set to start out flowing again after supplies were cut off by Russian strikes on Thursday.
Follow AP coverage of the war in Ukraine at: https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
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