More than 500 Ukrainian localities were still without electricity on Sunday following Russian strikes in recent weeks, which have largely damaged the national electricity grid, said a representative of the Ministry of the Interior.
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“The enemy continues to attack critical infrastructure in the country. Currently, 507 localities in eight regions of our country are cut off from the electricity supply,” Yevgeniy Yenin, First Deputy Minister of the Interior, told Ukrainian television.
In detail, “the Kharkiv region is the most affected, where 112 villages are isolated; in the Donetsk and Kherson regions, more than 90; the Mykolaiv region, 82; the Zaporizhia region, 76; the Lugansk region, 43,” he said.
On Saturday, Ukrainian authorities again urged civilians to hold on despite deteriorating living conditions.
“We must hold on,” the governor of the Mykolaiv region had launched on television [sud]Vitaliï Kim, while, several times a day, power cuts plunge millions of Ukrainians into darkness, not to mention the cold that settles in homes, the temperatures having been negative for several days.
The prospect of new Russian strikes on the Ukrainian energy network raises fears of a particularly complicated winter for the civilian population and a new wave of refugees from the country.