Russia launches Christmas Day attack on Ukraine’s energy system

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Russia has carried out a Christmas Day attack on Ukraine’s energy system, leaving more than half a million consumers without heat, water and electricity.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the attack, the 13th large-scale attack of 2024 on the country’s network, was “deliberate” and not a coincidence. “What could be more inhuman?” He wrote on X.

About 50 of the 70 missiles fired during the attack were intercepted, along with a “significant” portion of the more than 100 attack drones deployed, Zelenskyy added.

This year, Ukrainians marked Christmas Day on December 25 for the second time after switching to the western Gregorian calendar last year. The decision to stop celebrating Christmas on January 7 in accordance with the Orthodox calendar was made by Kiev to break with Russian influence.

Oleh Syniehubov, governor of Ukraine’s eastern Kharkiv region, told Ukraine’s national television news that the attack had left more than half a million consumers without heat, water and electricity.

Temperatures throughout Ukraine are around freezing.

Heating supplies were also cut in some areas of Ukraine’s Ivano-Frankivsk and Dnipropetrovsk regions in the west and south of the country.

Ukraine’s power grid operator, Ukrenergo, urged consumers to limit consumption by not turning on multiple appliances at once, adding that the system was still recovering from the earlier Russian attack on December 13.

Ukraine’s largest private energy company, DTEK, said its power plants had been damaged and one of its longtime employees killed.

Ukraine’s foreign minister, Andriy Sybiha, said on X that the attack reflects Russian President Vladimir Putin’s response to “those who talked about illusionary ‘Christmas truce’.”

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said last week that Zelenskyy had rejected his proposal for a ceasefire and prisoner exchange on the Orthodox Christmas of January 7.

Ukraine denied that such a proposal was ever on the table and asked Hungary to “refrain from manipulations” regarding the war. On Friday, Heorhii Tykhyi, spokesman for Ukraine’s foreign ministry, described it as “PR, a move” by Orbán.