“SURVIVE WINTER”
With about half of Ukraine’s energy grid damaged, the national operator warned Friday of emergency blackouts.
In Ukrainian-held Bakhmut – an eastern city at the epicentre of the war – some residents received wood stoves distributed by volunteers, AFP journalists said.
Oleksandra, 85, braved the cold to collect medication at a pharmacy in the Donetsk region city.
“I’ll survive winter. I’ll just walk more to get warm,” the old woman told AFP.
In the south, fresh Russian shelling in Kherson, recently recaptured by Ukraine, killed one person and wounded three more.
Kherson has been subjected to persistent Russian shelling since Moscow’s forces retreated in November, and power was cut in the city earlier this week.
On Thursday, Russian attacks killed 14 people, deputy head of the president’s office Kyrylo Tymoshenko said.
In the Russian-controlled region of Lugansk in eastern Ukraine, Moscow-installed officials said shelling from Kyiv’s forces had killed eight and wounded 23.
“The enemy is conducting barbaric shelling of cities and districts of the republic,” Leonid Pasechnik, the Russian-installed leader of Lugansk, said on social media.
PROTRACTED WAR
Moscow has said the strikes on Ukrainian infrastructure are a response to an explosion on the Kerch bridge connecting the Russian mainland to the Crimean peninsula.
The Kremlin has said it holds Kyiv ultimately responsible for the humanitarian impact of refusing Russian negotiation terms.
Ukrainian defence officials said this week that their forces had shot down more than a dozen Iranian-made attack drones launched at Kyiv, a sign that Western-supplied systems are having an impact.
Ukrainian military leaders have warned Moscow is preparing for a major winter offensive, including a fresh attempt to take Kyiv.
Aiming to push Moscow to the negotiating table, the EU on Friday imposed further sanctions, adding restrictions on the export of drone engines to Russia or countries like Iran looking to supply Moscow with weapons.
But NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg told AFP that Russia was readying for a protracted war.
“We see that they are mobilising more forces, that they are willing to suffer also a lot of casualties, that they are trying to get access to more weapons and ammunition,” he said.
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