Kyiv residents endure freezing cold in homes damaged by Russian strikes

Kyiv residents huddled against bitter winter cold inside their unheated apartments on Saturday (January 10) as engineers struggled to restore power, water and heat knocked out in the latest salvo of Russian strikes.

Serhii Przhistovskiy is an 85-year-old artist living in an apartment that was damaged by a Russian attack. There is no heating or water. He has to collect snow and melt it in a bucket at home to have water.

Halyna Turchyn, a 71-year-old pensioner living on Kyiv's badly affected eastern bank, had a window covered by plastic sheeting after it was blown out when drone debris hit another part of her building. She said she has no heating or electricity.

"These little gas canisters. We use them to heat things up. Today we will cook something to eat, because we haven’t cooked anything for two days already", Turchyn said.

The city administration said around noon local time (1000 GMT) on Saturday that the state grid operator Ukrenergo had ordered the city's power system to be shut down, and that the water and heating systems, as well as electrified public transport, would also stop working as a result.

Less than an hour later, Ukrenergo said engineers had managed to remedy the issue, which had been caused by damage from previous Russian strikes, and that power was coming back online in parts of Kyiv. Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said the heating system, which in Ukrainian cities is centralized and pumps hot water to homes in pipes, was also coming back on, and that she expected the heat supply to be fully restored on Saturday.

Production: Vladyslav Smilianets, Kateryna Besedina/Reuters