Women, children and the elderly in particular should spend the winter in areas with better infrastructure, said Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Wereshchuk on Tuesday. However, the situation is currently difficult in other areas of Ukraine, as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Monday evening. Kherson was under Russian occupation for around eight months before being recaptured by Ukrainian forces on November 11. The destruction in the southern Ukrainian city is enormous, electricity and water supplies have largely collapsed.
The power grid in the other regions of the country was also badly damaged as a result of the massive and targeted Russian attacks. “Tonight the situation in Kyiv and its environs, as well as in Vinnytsia, Sumy, Ternopil, Cherkassy, Odessa and some other cities and regions is particularly difficult,” Zelenskyy said in his daily video address. He called on regional and municipal administrations to continue to encourage citizens to save electricity. Electricity must also be saved in public spaces. Consumption continues to exceed production.
The head of the electricity supplier Yasno, Serhiy Kovalenko, said on Monday that people should be prepared for power cuts until the end of March. “Even if there are fewer outages now, I want everyone to understand: Ukrainians will probably have to live with outages at least until the end of March,” Kovalenko wrote on Twitter.
The World Health Organization warned on Monday that the winter “will be life-threatening for millions of people in Ukraine”. “Put simply, this winter will be about survival,” said WHO Regional Director for Europe Hans Kluge in Kyiv.
The British Ministry of Defense sees the Russian Black Sea Fleet as vulnerable. A suspected Ukrainian attack on oil depots near the Russian port of Novorossiysk shows this, according to the daily British intelligence update on the war on Tuesday. It referred to Russian and Ukrainian media reports of an attack on November 18 at an oil terminal near the Russian naval base.
“Not all the details of this incident are known yet,” the ministry said. “Any demonstration that Ukraine has the ability to threaten Novorossiysk would pose another strategic challenge to the Black Sea Fleet. It would also further undermine Russia’s already reduced maritime influence in the Black Sea,” the statement said. Media had reported that a Ukrainian drone had probably attacked a terminal of the oil company Transneft on the night of November 18. The company denied the reports.
After Ukraine attacked the Russian base of Sevastopol on the annexed peninsula of Crimea, the Russian Navy moved several submarines to Novorossiysk. The fact that this port is now also accessible to the Ukrainians is also a threat to Russian landing ships stationed there, it was said in London. These ships have taken on a more important role in supplying Russian forces in Ukraine since the Kerch Bridge was damaged in October.
Source: Nachrichten
