“We are doing everything we can to avoid this, but let’s be frank, our enemies are doing everything in order for the city to be without heating, without electricity, without water supply, in general, so that we all die,” Vitali Klitschko told state media.
He added: “The future of the country and the future of each one of us depends on how prepared we are for different situations,” according to the Associated Press.
Targeting Energy Infrastructure
- Russia has focused on striking Ukraine’s energy infrastructure over the past month, causing power shortages and blackouts across the country.
- Kyiv was scheduled to see power outages every hour, Sunday, in parts of the city and the surrounding area.
- Power outages have been planned in the nearby Chernihiv, Cherkasy, Zhytomyr, Sumy, Kharkiv and Poltava regions, Ukrainian state-owned energy operator Ukrenrego said.
- Kyiv plans to deploy about 1,000 heating points, but noted that this “may not be enough” for a city of 3 million people.
- In the Donetsk city of Bakhmut, about 15,000 Ukrainians are left without water or electricity as a result of the daily bombardment, according to local media.
- Media reports said, on Sunday, that the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant was reconnected to the Ukrainian electricity grid.
- Europe’s largest nuclear plant needs electricity to maintain vital cooling systems, but it has been running emergency diesel generators since Russian bombings cut off its external connections.
Ukrainian progress in the south
- As Russia intensifies its attacks on the capital, Ukrainian forces are advancing in the south.
- The Ukrainian military said, on Sunday, that residents of the Ukrainian city of Kherson, occupied by Russia, “received warning messages on their phones urging them to evacuate as soon as possible.”
- Russian soldiers warned civilians that “the Ukrainian army is preparing for a massive attack”, and asked the people to leave for the city’s right bank immediately.
Why Kherson?
Russian forces are preparing to launch a Ukrainian counter-attack to retake the southern city of Kherson, as it is a strategic city that was captured by Russian forces during the first days of the military operation.
- In September, Russia annexed Kherson, along with three other regions of Ukraine, to its territory, and subsequently declared martial law in the four provinces.
- The administration installed by the Kremlin in Kherson has already removed tens of thousands of civilians from the city.
- “Russia occupies and vacates Kherson simultaneously, trying to convince the Ukrainians that they are leaving while they are actually digging in it,” said Natalia Homenyuk, a spokeswoman for the southern Ukrainian forces.
- “There are defensive units that have dug deep there with great force, a certain amount of equipment remains, and firing positions have been set up,” Hominiuk said.
What is happening in the field?
- In the east, Russian troops are entrenched in a hotly contested area, exacerbating the already difficult conditions for the Ukrainian population and army, after Moscow’s illegal annexation and the declaration of martial law in Donetsk province.
- “The attacks almost completely destroyed the power stations serving the city of Bakhmut and the nearby town of Soledar,” according to the governor of the Ukrainian region, Pavlo Kirilenko.
- Kirilenko said late Saturday that the bombing had killed a civilian and wounded 3 people.
Donetsk situation
- Between Saturday and Sunday, Russia launched 4 missiles and 19 air strikes, hitting more than 35 villages in 9 regions, from Chernihiv and Kharkiv in the northeast to Kherson and Mykolaiv in the south, the president’s office said.
- The office stated that the strikes killed two people and wounded six.
- Moscow-backed separatists had held part of Donetsk for about eight years, before the Russian military operation in Ukraine in late February.
- Protecting the “republic” declared by the separatists was one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s justifications for war, and his forces had spent months trying to seize the entire territory.
- Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a televised speech at night that “while Russia’s “most brutal” practices have been concentrated in Donetsk, it continues its “constant fighting” elsewhere along the front line, which extends for more than a thousand kilometers.
Militia training centers
- On the outskirts of Bekhmut Donetsk, the front line is currently located, where mercenaries from the “Wagner Group”, a shadowy Russian military company, are reported to be leading the attack.
- The founder of the group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, who usually kept a low profile, now plays a more visible role in the war.
- On Sunday, Prigozhin announced, in a statement, “the financing and establishment of training centers for militias” in the Russian regions of Belgorod and Kursk in the southwest of the country, saying that the local population is “the best to fight subversion on Russian soil.”
Mass graves in Kharkiv
- In Kharkiv, officials worked to identify bodies found in mass graves after the Russians withdrew, Dmytro Chubenko, a spokesman for the Regional Prosecutor’s Office, told local media.
- DNA samples were collected from 450 bodies found in a mass grave in Izium, but the samples need to be matched with relatives.
- So far, only 80 people have participated in the matching process.
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