About one million customers were without heat and power in the Dnipro region of Ukraine early Thursday morning after Russian strikes hit key energy infrastructure overnight.
The Ukrainian authorities said that crews were racing to restore service, and urged people to stock up on water and conserve batteries. The local authorities and power companies said mid-morning that about 200,000 customers were back on the grid but that they could not predict when services would be fully restored.
“Restoration work has been going on nonstop since last night — crews from all over the region are working,” DTEK, one of Ukraine’s main power companies, said in a statement. “As soon as we restore all critical infrastructure, we will do everything possible to restore power to families as quickly as possible.”
Russian forces have been pounding Ukraine’s power grid in recent months. Moscow has deployed the tactic to devastating effect for the past three winters of war, in what Kyiv has called a campaign to break the will of Ukrainians.
Russia has also recently started striking Ukraine’s gas infrastructure — wells, storage sites, pipelines and other critical components — to take out heat as well.
It was not immediately clear what sites were hit in the latest attack, which began on Wednesday night while temperatures hovered below freezing. Strikes also knocked out power to much of the Zaporizhzhia region, but power there was largely restored as of Thursday morning, according to Ukraine’s grid operator, Ukrenergo.
Like much of Europe, cold weather has gripped Ukraine in recent days and the authorities have warned that temperatures are expected to plummet to minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit at night, or about minus 20 degrees Celsius, and 14 degrees Fahrenheit during the day.
Evelina Riabenko contributed reporting.
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