Russian attacks have left Ukraine’s southeastern regions of Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhzhia almost completely without electricity, the country’s energy ministry said on Wednesday evening.
Critical infrastructure is “operating on reserve power”, it said in a Telegram statement, while officials said water supplies and the internet were also disrupted.
Russia has recently stepped up its attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, aiming to paralyze electricity supplies during a severe winter.
“Ukraine’s energy system is under enemy attack every day, and energy workers operate in extremely difficult conditions to provide people with light and heat,” wrote Prime Minister of Ukraine Yulia Svyrydenko on Telegram.
“Deteriorating weather conditions are putting more stress on critical infrastructure,” he said.
Power and heating outages came as temperatures dropped.
“Emergency restoration work in the regions affected by the attack will begin as soon as the security situation allows,” state energy company Ukrenergo said on Telegram.
It added: “The main task of energy workers is to restore critical infrastructure.”
Dnipro city Mayor Borys Filatov said on Telegram that all the city’s hospitals have been completely switched to generators.
“There are necessary water supplies, the treatment process does not stop. Water drainage in houses is also supported by alternative sources of electricity,” said Filatov.
School holidays have been extended till January 9 due to power cuts, he added.
The head of the Zaporizhzhia regional administration, Ivan Fedorov, said that everything possible was being done to restore power.
“At this time, water utility workers have almost restored water to our homes, despite the fact that there is a complete blackout in the region,” Fedorov said in a video message published on Telegram.
DTEK, Ukraine’s largest private energy provider, lives in permanent crisis mode due to Russian attacks on the grid, its chief executive told the BBC last monththat most of Ukraine suffers from long power cuts during the winter.
Maxim Timchenko, CEO of DTEK, which provides power for 5.6 million Ukrainians, says that the intensity of the strikes has always been “we don’t have time to recover”.
As the fourth anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion approaches, Timchenko said Russia has repeatedly targeted DTEK’s energy grid with “waves of drones, cruise and ballistic missiles” and his company is struggling to cope.
The attacks come as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says he has European allies he was not given a good guarantee that they would defend his country in the event of a new Russian aggression.
After the talks in Paris on Tuesday, the UK and France signed a declaration of intent to send troops to Ukraine if a peace agreement is made with Russia.
Moscow has repeatedly warned that any foreign troops in Ukraine would be “legitimate targets”.