Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko has called on residents to temporarily leave the Ukrainian capital for places with alternative sources of electricity and heat.
That came following a major Russian missile and drone attack overnight into this morning that severely damaged critical energy infrastructure.
The strikes, described by officials as one of the most damaging on Kyiv’s power grid this winter, left approximately half of the city’s apartment buildings, around 6,000, without heating as temperatures plummeted to minus 8°C and forecasters predicted further falls.
Disruptions to water supplies were also reported across several districts, compounding the hardship for the capital’s approximately 3 million inhabitants as winter deepens.
In a statement posted on Telegram, Klitschko said: “I appeal to the capital’s residents who have the opportunity to temporarily leave the city, where there are alternative sources of power and heat, to do so.”
He emphasised that city services were operating under emergency conditions, with utility workers prioritising the restoration of electricity and heat, including powering hospitals and maternity facilities via mobile boiler houses.
Klitschko warned that weather conditions would remain challenging in the coming days.
The attack killed at least four people in Kyiv, with several others injured and caused fires in residential buildings.
Ukrainian air defences were active but the barrage, which included advanced weaponry such as Russia’s Oreshnik ballistic missile, targeted energy facilities. The blitz continued Russia’s sustained campaign against Ukraine’s power grid since late 2022.
Authorities in Kyiv have urged residents to prepare for prolonged outages, with emergency power restrictions now affecting the entire city.
This latest escalation comes amid freezing temperatures and follows recent warnings from Ukrainian officials and the US embassy in the city about potential large-scale strikes.
The infrastructure war has intensified mutual targeting of energy assets, with Ukraine conducting strikes on Russian facilities while Russia aims to degrade civilian resilience in Ukraine during the cold season.
More than 500,000 residents in Russia’s Belgorod region were left without electricity following an overnight Ukrainian attack on energy infrastructure, the region’s governor Vyacheslav Gladkov announced today.
According to Gladkov’s statement on Telegram, as of 6:00am local time, 556,000 people across six municipalities were left without power as a direct result of strikes by the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) targeting utility facilities.
A similar number of residents, primarily in around 1,920 multi-apartment buildings, were also without heating, with temperatures hovering around freezing. Additionally, reports indicated that approximately 200,000 people were affected by disruptions to water supplies.
The governor described the incident as resulting from “night-time shelling by the enemy” on engineering infrastructure, with no immediate reports of casualties from the attack itself.
Emergency services were mobilised to assess damage and begin restoration efforts, although Gladkov noted that a fuller picture of the destruction and repair timelines would emerge once daylight allowed for detailed inspections.
Russian sources, including State-affiliated outlets such as Izvestia and EADaily, attributed the blackout to targeted Ukrainian missile or combined strikes on critical energy sites, including potential substations and power plants.
The Belgorod region, which borders Ukraine and serves as a key logistics hub for Russian forces, has been repeatedly targeted throughout the war, with drone and missile attacks becoming more frequent in recent months.
On the night between January 7 and 8, Russian forces launched a large-scale drone attack on Ukraine’s critical energy infrastructure, plunging large parts of the southeastern Dnipropetrovsk (Dnipro) region into darkness and cold.
Ukrainian officials reported that more than 1 million people were left without access to heating, running water and in many cases electricity, as temperatures dipped below freezing.
Europe’s military assistance to Ukraine is losing momentum, with new allocations in 2025 on track to fall to their lowest level since Russia’s full-scale invasion began in 2022. https://t.co/pRfQKYvZB3
— Brussels Signal (@brusselssignal) December 10, 2025
