“Putin consciously chose Christmas for his attack. What could be more inhumane?”
This “terror” is “Putin’s response to those who spoke of an illusory ‘Christmas ceasefire’” between kyiv and Moscow, asserted the head of Ukrainian diplomacy Andriï Sybiga.
The strikes targeted six Ukrainian regions, leaving at least one dead and six injured and causing widespread heating outages in near-zero temperatures, according to Ukrainian authorities. In the city of Dnipro, in the center-east of the country, an employee of a thermal power plant was killed, said Deputy Prime Minister Oleksiï Kouleba. In Kharkiv, Ukraine's second city located in the northeast and very often targeted, half a million homes remained without electricity, heating and tap water, said the governor of this region Oleg Synegoubov. . At least six people were injured in Kharkiv in these latest attacks.
The cuts even briefly affected the Ivano-Frankivsk region, in the west of the country and hundreds of kilometers from the front line, according to the regional administration.
Since the start of its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russia has regularly bombed its neighbor's power grid, plunging hundreds of thousands of people, if not millions, into the dark and cold, often in winter temperatures. “This is already the thirteenth massive attack on Ukraine’s energy system this year,” said DTEK, Ukraine’s main private energy supplier.
Four dead on the Russian side
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Wednesday denounced “Putin's bloody and brutal war machine” which targets Ukraine “without any respite, even at Christmas”.
On the Russian side, a Ukrainian strike left four dead and several injured on Wednesday in Lgov, a town in the Kursk border region, where Ukraine has been leading an offensive since August, said interim governor Alexander Khinchteïn.
A new Christmas with the West
Wednesday's attacks come on the day when Ukraine, for the second time in its modern history, celebrates Christmas Day on December 25, as in the Western world, and no longer on January 7 which corresponds to December 25 of ancient Julian calendar still followed by the Russian Orthodox Church for religious holidays. This change was made official during the summer of 2023, in particular to differentiate itself from Russia.
To mark the holiday, nearly 200 Ukrainians, adults and children wearing traditional costumes, paraded through the center of kyiv on Wednesday singing Christmas carols. “With this march, we show that we will not let ourselves be discouraged” by Russia and will defend “our independence,” declared one of the participants, Bogdana Kouïevoda, 30 years old.
