This week, intense battles continued to rage along the front lines. Ukraine has been grappling with an extremely difficult energy situation that results from Russian attacks and is aggravated by weather conditions. When the temperatures dropped to between minus -18 and -20 degrees Celsius this week, residents in several Ukrainian regions, including Kyiv and the surrounding area, experienced severe power cuts and were left with no heating. As of Friday afternoon, around 100 apartment buildings in Kyiv were still in the cold, the city’s mayor Vitaliy Klychko said.
Emergency power cuts persisted in Kyiv and the adjacent region throughout the week. Households had power in place for three hours on average followed by rotating power cuts lasting for up to 10 hours. On Wednesday, President Volodymyr Zelenskyi said that a state of emergency in the energy sector would be declared in Ukraine. Ukraine’s Security Service has gathered a body of evidence that defines Russian attacks on the energy grid as crimes against humanity. Russia has fired more than 13,300 missiles and 142,300 drones at Ukraine since the invasion, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, General Oleksandr Syrskyi said.
The U.S. accused Russia of a “dangerous and inexplicable escalation” in fighting as it tries to advance peace negotiations. Early in the week, the 2nd Corps of Ukraine’s National Guard, Khartia, took control of the building of the Kupyansk city council and raised the Ukrainian flag there. Ukrainian troops are ending a mop-up operation in the city, the unit said. Ukraine’s parliament on Wednesday appointed Mykhailo Fedorov, outgoing First Vice Prime Minister and Minister of Digital Transformation, as defense minister.
International Monetary Fund managing director Kristalina Georgieva met with top Ukrainian officials in Kyiv on Thursday.
Ukraine convenes “Energy Ramstein” meeting.
Ukraine calls a meeting of its international partners, dubbed the “Energy Ramstein,” to secure additional support for the energy sector, the country’s Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiha said on social media Thursday. The move was ordered by Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko and is jointly implemented with the Energy Ministry, he added. The meeting’s name is a reference to an initial gathering of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group at Ramstein Air Base in Germany.
The outcomes Ukraine expects of the meeting include the allies’ “additional contributions” and “concrete commitments” to support the energy sector, Sybiha said. “We expect new bilateral energy aid packages from our partners in the nearest time. We’ll get news on that tomorrow,” he added.
