By Max Hunder, Reuters
Ukrainian emmergency personnel work to extinguish a fire at the site of an air attack in Kyiv on 24 January, 2026. Photo: OLEKSANDR MAGULA / AFP
Russia launched another vast attack on Ukraine's energy system in the small hours of Saturday, rocking Kyiv with explosions throughout the night and leaving 1.2 million properties without power countrywide during subzero winter cold.
Over 3000 buildings in the capital were without heating on Saturday evening, down from 6000 in the morning, as temperatures hovered around -10C.
Many residents' apartments were already freezing cold from disruption to Kyiv's centralised heat distribution system following previous attacks.
Moscow carried out the strikes as trilateral, US-brokered talks between Russia and Ukraine continued into a second day in the United Arab Emirates, later adjourning with no sign of compromise.
Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said Russia targeted the capital and four regions in the country's north and east.
"We are quickly restoring damaged power generation facilities, increasing imports as much as possible, and introducing new alternative capacity," she said.
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said one person was killed in the capital city and four were injured, three of them requiring hospitalisation, while over 30 people including a child were injured in Ukraine's second city, Kharkiv.
Klitschko visited Kyiv's worst-affected district, the northeastern suburb of Troyeshchyna, where 600 buildings were without power, water and heat.
He said vulnerable residents were being given hot food and medicine, and that the city was rolling out extra, heated shelters which would be operating around the clock in the area.
Kyiv recently loosened its wartime military curfew to allow people in freezing apartments to go to heated tents or public buildings at night.
Russia, which has pummelled Ukraine's power grid since November 2022, nine months into its full-scale invasion, is conducting its heaviest bombardment campaign on energy facilities this winter, leaving people across Ukraine with only a few hours of electricity a day and some without heat or water.
Over 800,000 people in the capital and another 400,000 in the northern region of Chernihiv were without power after the latest attacks, Deputy Prime Minister Oleksiy Kuleba said.
Ukraine's air force said Russia had unleashed 375 drones and 21 missiles, including two of its rarely deployed Tsirkon ballistic missiles, in its overnight attack.
The sky over Kyiv was lit up by regular orange flashes as air defences fired on missiles and drones descending on the capital. Loud booms echoed around the city's tall buildings.
Tymur Tkachenko, head of Kyiv's military administration, reported strikes in at least four districts. A medical facility was among the buildings damaged.
Before Saturday, Kyiv had already endured two mass overnight attacks since the New Year that have knocked out power and heating to hundreds of residential buildings.
Emergency workers were still engaged in restoring services to residents that had been knocked out by those attacks, and Klitschko said many of the buildings that had lost heating on Saturday had only recently had it restored.
In Kharkiv, a frequent target 30km from the Russian border and much closer to eastern battlefronts, Mayor Ihor Terekhov said 25 drones had hit several districts.
Writing on Telegram, Terekhov said the drones had struck a dormitory for displaced people and two medical facilities including a maternity hospital.
- Reuters
