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KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia fired around 450 long-range drones and 70 missiles of various types at Ukraine in a major attack overnight, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Tuesday.
The barrage came a day before the two countries were due to attend U.S.-brokered talks in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, on ending the all-out war, which Russia launched nearly four years ago.
The bombardment of at least five regions of Ukraine specifically took aim at the power grid, Zelenskyy said, as part of Moscow’s ongoing campaign to deny civilians light, heating and running water amid the coldest winter in years. At least 10 people were wounded, officials said.
“Taking advantage of the coldest days of winter to terrorize people is more important to Russia than diplomacy,” Zelenskyy said. Temperatures in Kyiv fell to minus 20 degrees Celsius (minus 4 Fahrenheit) during the night and stood at minus 16 C (minus 3 F) on Tuesday.
He urged allies to send more air defense supplies and bring “maximum pressure” to bear on Russia to end its full-scale invasion, which began on Feb. 24, 2022. NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte was on an official visit to Kyiv on Tuesday to back Ukraine’s war effort.
Officials have described recent talks between Moscow and Kyiv delegations as constructive. But after a year of efforts, the Trump administration is still searching for a breakthrough on key issues such as who keeps the Ukrainian land that Russia’s army has occupied, and a comprehensive settlement appears distant. The Abu Dhabi talks were scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday.
A Kremlin official said last week that Russia had agreed to halt strikes on Kyiv for a week until Feb. 1 because of the frigid temperatures, following a personal request from U.S. President Donald Trump to Russian President Vladimir Putin. However, the bitter cold is continuing and so are Russia’s aerial attacks.
Russia has tried to wear down Ukrainians’ appetite for the fight by creating hardship for the civilian population living in dark, freezing homes.
It has tried to wreck Ukraine’s electricity network, targeting substations, transformers, turbines and generators at power plants. Ukraine’s largest private power company, DTEK, said that the overnight attack hit its thermal power plants in the ninth major assault since October.
In Kyiv, officials said that five people were wounded in the strikes that damaged and set fire to residential buildings, a kindergarten and a gas station in various parts of the capital, according to the State Emergency Service.
By early morning, 1,170 apartment buildings in the capital were without heating, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said. That set back desperate repair operations that had restored power to all but 80 apartment buildings, he said.
