(Reuters) – Ukraine’s capital Kyiv, the area around the Black Sea port of Odesa and more than a dozen other regions are grappling with power shortages following relentless Russian attacks on energy infrastructure, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Friday.
“The situation with power supplies is difficult in 17 regions and in the capital,” Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address.
“Things are very difficult in Kyiv region and the city of Kyiv – Odesa region and also Vynnitsia and Ternopil,” he said, referring to two areas in western and southwestern Ukraine.
Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said earlier that Russian attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure have crippled half of the country’s energy system.
Kyiv is by far the largest city in Ukraine with an estimated population of about 3 million, with up to two million more in the Kyiv region. Odesa, the focal point of Ukraine’s agriculture exports, is the third most populous city, with about one million.
Emergency blackouts were occurring in those areas, Zelenskiy said. Other areas were subject to “stabilisation” blackouts according to a schedule.
With temperatures falling and Kyiv seeing its first winter snow, officials were working to restore power nationwide after some of the heaviest bombardments during the past month of Ukrainian civilian infrastructure in the nine-month-long war.
Moscow denies deliberately targeting civilians, though the conflict that began with Russian forces invading their neighbour in late February has killed thousands, displaced millions and pulverised Ukrainian cities.
(Reporting by Ron Popeski; editing by Grant McCool)
