Yumi
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When hundreds of Russian missiles and drones assaulted Ukraine on Monday morning, Victoria Novorzhytska’s power went out first. The water supply was cut immediately after that.
She knew immediately the day would turn into a struggle. She works from her home in Zhytomyr, west of Kyiv, and no power means no work.
But living at war gives her a different perspective. “We don’t mind the fact that there is no electricity or water, we are more worried about our lives,” Novorzhytska told CNN in an interview.
Russia launched its biggest ever aerial attack against Ukraine on Monday, hitting energy infrastructure across the country. More strikes landed on Tuesday morning, killing five people and raising the death toll from this week’s attacks to 12.
The Ukrainian government and the country’s major energy companies would not disclose the scale of the disruption from the onslaught, but it is clear it knocked out power for millions.
Ukraine’s largest private energy company DTEK announced rolling blackouts for number of regions on Monday, including Kyiv, Odesa, Dnipropetrovsk and Donetsk.
For people on the western outskirts of the capital, this meant six hours of darkness followed by two hours of power between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m.
The scheduled cuts add inconvenience to people’s lives, but they at least allow them to plan around power outages – so that residents of high-rise apartment blocks don’t get stuck outside when the elevators are not working, and that people charge up vital electronic devices while the power is on.
That these blackouts are already needed in the summer is particularly worrying. This situation could be far worse in a few months’ time, when demand for electricity tends to be higher in the cold, dark winter.
“The key task is to get through the winter, to provide energy supply to critical infrastructure, people and the economy,” Ukraine’s Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal told reporters on Tuesday.
Shmyhal said the focus now was on repair and rebuilding. “We do this all the time, after each Russian shelling billions are allocated (and) equipment is brought to Ukraine.”
She knew immediately the day would turn into a struggle. She works from her home in Zhytomyr, west of Kyiv, and no power means no work.
But living at war gives her a different perspective. “We don’t mind the fact that there is no electricity or water, we are more worried about our lives,” Novorzhytska told CNN in an interview.
Russia launched its biggest ever aerial attack against Ukraine on Monday, hitting energy infrastructure across the country. More strikes landed on Tuesday morning, killing five people and raising the death toll from this week’s attacks to 12.
The Ukrainian government and the country’s major energy companies would not disclose the scale of the disruption from the onslaught, but it is clear it knocked out power for millions.
Ukraine’s largest private energy company DTEK announced rolling blackouts for number of regions on Monday, including Kyiv, Odesa, Dnipropetrovsk and Donetsk.
For people on the western outskirts of the capital, this meant six hours of darkness followed by two hours of power between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m.
The scheduled cuts add inconvenience to people’s lives, but they at least allow them to plan around power outages – so that residents of high-rise apartment blocks don’t get stuck outside when the elevators are not working, and that people charge up vital electronic devices while the power is on.
That these blackouts are already needed in the summer is particularly worrying. This situation could be far worse in a few months’ time, when demand for electricity tends to be higher in the cold, dark winter.
“The key task is to get through the winter, to provide energy supply to critical infrastructure, people and the economy,” Ukraine’s Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal told reporters on Tuesday.
Shmyhal said the focus now was on repair and rebuilding. “We do this all the time, after each Russian shelling billions are allocated (and) equipment is brought to Ukraine.”
