New Russian strikes in Ukraine have left 30 civilians dead and injured, according to the United Nations, and left millions without electricity, access to water and heating as of Wednesday, while temperatures in some regions are already negative.
A balance sheet by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) indicates that the escalation of the attacks has affected regions such as Lviv, in the west, Zaporijia and Odessa, in the south, and Chernihiv, in the north.
The blackout also affected large parts of the central regions of Vinnytsya and Dnipro, Khmelnitsk further west, Kharkiv and Sumi in the northeast, Mykolaiv in the south and the capital Kiev.
In Kiev, the entire population — an estimated three million people — was left without water this Wednesday, and authorities reported working 24 hours a day to restore the supply, which also happened in parts of Odessa.
The attacks hit residential buildings in addition to infrastructure in Kiev and in the cities of Chabany and Vyshhorod, on the outskirts of the capital, and authorities confirmed that at least 30 civilians were killed or injured in the three locations.
In the Zaporijia region, there are reports of a newborn baby killed in an airstrike that hit a maternity hospital in Vilniansk, and children killed and injured in Kherson and Berislav districts.
The attacks also affected people trying to get help, when a government facility in Zaporijia used by volunteers to distribute supplies was hit, killing and injuring some civilians who were there, OCHA’s account said.
Humanitarian aid teams in Ukraine are working to support people facing the challenges of the energy crisis, which was already severe and has now been exacerbated by this Wednesday’s new wave of attacks.
In recent weeks, more than 430,000 people have received some form of immediate aid to get through the winter, and nearly 400 generators have been provided by the International Organization for Migration (IOM), UNICEF, the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and the World Health Organization (WHO) to secure power in hospitals, schools and other critical facilities.
The government has informed the population that more than 4,000 heating points have been installed in all regions of Ukraine, and that the United Nations and humanitarian partners are supplying these facilities.
According to the Ministry of Energy, temporary power outages affected all Ukrainian nuclear power plants.
Wednesday’s attacks came hours after the European Parliament passed a resolution declaring the Russian Federation a “state sponsor of terrorism”, stating that deliberate attacks and atrocities against Ukraine violate human rights and international humanitarian law.
The military offensive launched by Russia in Ukraine on February 24 has already led to the flight of more than 13 million people — more than six million internally displaced persons and more than 7.8 million to European countries — according to the latest data of the UN, which classifies this refugee crisis as the worst in Europe since World War II (1939-1945).
The Russian invasion – justified by the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, with the need to “denazify” and demilitarize Ukraine for Russian security – was condemned by the international community at large, which responded by sending weapons to Ukraine and Russia political and economic sanctions.
The UN presented 6,595 dead civilians and 10,189 wounded as confirmed since the start of the war, underlining that these numbers are well below the real ones.
Source: DN
