Ukraine will withstand winter despite Russian airstrikes, first lady vows

Ukraine’s first lady has said her country stands “ready to endure” the winter despite the cold and widespread blackouts caused by Russian attacks on energy infrastructure.

“We’ve had so many terrible challenges, seen so many victims, so much destruction, that blackouts are not the worst thing to happen to us,” Olena Zelenska told the BBC in Kyiv. “We are ready to endure this.”

Zelenska’s comments come as temperatures approached freezing and nearly half of Kyiv residents were still without electricity after two days of Russian shelling hammered the country’s already fractured energy grid.

Temperatures in parts of the country can reach lows of -20 C during the winter. The World Health Organization has warned of “life-threatening” consequences and estimated that millions could leave their homes as a result.

“A third of houses in Kyiv already have heating and specialists continue to restore it. Half of consumers are still without electricity,” Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko said today.

 “During the day, energy companies plan to reconnect electricity for all consumers on an alternating basis,” he wrote on Telegram.

Zelenska, 44, said that according to a recent poll 90 per cent of Ukrainians said they were prepared to live for two to three years with electricity shortages if they could see the possibility of entering the European Union. “You know, it is easy to run a marathon when you know how many kilometres there are,” she said.

President Zelensky said in his nightly address yesterday: “The situation with electricity remains difficult in almost all regions.

“However, we are gradually moving away from blackouts — every hour we return power to new consumers.”

James Cleverly, the foreign secretary, met Zelensky in Kyiv today and said the UK would step up its support for Ukraine, including a fleet of 24 ambulances. He stressed that Britain would continue to give military, economic and diplomatic support.

Ukraine accused Russian forces of launching around 70 cruise missiles as well as drones in attacks that left 10 dead and around 50 wounded in its latest attack on Ukrainian infrastructure.

The western region of Khmelnytskyi was one of the worst affected by power outages, with just 35 per cent of its normal capacity, but that was enough to connect critical infrastructure, according to Serhii Hamaliy, the head of the regional administration.

The strikes killed seven people at Vyshgorod, on the outskirts of the city, said Oleksiy Kuleba, the Kyiv regional governor.

A fresh round of shelling hit the recently recaptured southern city of Kherson killing at least four people, according to a senior local official.

About 300,000 residents in the eastern Kharkiv region, near the border with Russia, were still without power on Thursday evening, said Oleh Synehubov of the regional military administration.

“We’ve restarted power supplies,” said Igor Terekhov, mayor of Kharkiv, adding that water was being restored to homes and municipal workers were reconnecting public transport.

“Believe me, it was very difficult.”