Nearly half of Kyiv without heat or power after Russian bombardment

An overnight Russian bombardment on Kyiv left thousands of residential buildings and parliament without heating and water in -14C temperatures on Tuesday, just as the Ukrainian capital was scrambling to restore vital utilities destroyed in earlier attacks.

The barrage of hundreds of drones and missiles, which targeted energy facilities across Ukraine, killed at least one 50-year-old man near Kyiv.

More than half a million people have evacuated from the capital this month, when Russia unleashed its strongest attack on the capital's energy infrastructure in the war, the city's mayor, Vitali Klitschko, told AFP.

AFP journalists in the capital heard air raid sirens and explosions as Ukrainian air defence systems responded to the drones and missiles.

Sheltering in a metro station in the centre of Kyiv, Marina Sergienko, a 51-year-old accountant, said she thought the repeated Russian strikes, which have left millions in the cold and dark over recent weeks, had a clear purpose.

Residents left without power as Russia targets Ukraine's energy grid

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"To wear down the people, push things to some critical point so there's no strength left, to break our resistance," she told AFP, taking cover alongside dozens of other Kyiv residents bundled in hats and coats.

Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiga lashed out at Russian President Vladimir Putin, saying: "War criminal Putin continues to wage a genocidal war against women, children and elderly."

He said Russian forces had targeted energy infrastructure overnight in at least seven regions, and urged Ukraine's allies to bolster its air defence systems.

Zelensky suggested he would skip the ongoing World Economic Forum in Switzerland to deal with the aftermath of the strike.

But he kept open the possibility of going to the gathering of world leaders in the ski resort of Davos if agreements with the United States on possible post-war economic and security support were ready to be signed.

In Davos, Russian envoy Kirill Dmitriev US President Donald Trump's special envoy Steve Witkoff and the US leader's son-in-law Jared Kushner.

"The meetings are constructive, and more and more people are realising that Russia's position is right," said Dmitriev after the meeting on resolving the war.

600,000 left Kyiv

Russia fired some 339 long-range combat drones and 34 missiles in the overnight barrage, Kyiv's air force said.

"The performance of the Air Force against the Shaheds is unsatisfactory," the Ukrainian president said, referring to the Iranian-designed drones used by Russia.

Zelensky, who had recently complained of slow arms deliveries, said Ukraine had received a shipment of ammunition for air defence systems just a day earlier.

The bombardment came around 10 days after the most significant Russian strike on Kyiv's energy grid since its invasion almost four years ago.

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That strike, at dawn on January 9, left half the capital without heating and many residents without electricity for days in sub-zero temperatures, prompting Klitschko to issue a rare call on residents to evacuate.

"Not everyone has a chance to leave the city, but right now the population is reduced," Klitschko told AFP in an interview, specifying that 600,000 people had moved from the capital of some 3.6 million people.

Most of the buildings cut off on Tuesday were those affected on January 9.

Schools have been closed until February and street lights dimmed in a bid to preserve energy resources.

Zelensky said more than one million people in Kyiv would be without electricity by Tuesday night, and more than 4,000 housing blocks were still without heating -- about half of the total in the capital.

The Ukrainian parliament building was also cut off, speaker Ruslan Stefanchuk announced.

Nationwide bombardment

Energy facilities, including critical infrastructure, were also hit across the country, in the Odesa, Poltava and Rivne regions, authorities said.

The strikes renewed in the evening, with Russian drones killing three in the Zaporizhzhia region, Ukraine's interior ministry said.

The power grid supplying the defunct Chernobyl nuclear power plant was also hit, briefly cutting off electricity needed for the maintenance of the station. It was later reconnected to the grid, the plant's director Sergiy Tarakanov said.

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Russia has been pounding Ukraine's energy sector since the start of its invasion, in what Kyiv says is an attempt to sap morale and weaken Ukrainians' resistance.

The Kremlin says it only targets Ukrainian military facilities and has blamed the continuation of the war on Kyiv for refusing to accept its peace demands.

The Russian defence ministry said on Tuesday it had carried out strikes on facilities that support Ukraine's military.

The International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for two top Russian military officials over the attacks on Ukraine's energy grid.

The court said it constituted a war crime as it was designed to harm Ukrainian civilians.

Due to wartime sensitivities, Kyiv does not say which energy facilities have been damaged or destroyed in Russian attacks.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)