The Russian bombings in Ukraine in recent days have seriously damaged civilian infrastructure in many areas of the country and above all in Kiev, the capital, where the population has never been in such difficulty in daily life. More than two days after the last bombing, mayor Vitali Klitschko said that about 60 percent of the city is still without energy, while in many houses, offices and public places there is also a complete lack of water.
It is the result of a strategy that Russia has been persistently pursuing for about a month and a half, following several heavy defeats suffered in the field and as a sign of retaliation: its army bombs Ukrainian cities on a large scale, aiming to strike specifically the main civil infrastructures that guarantee electricity, heating, water and telecommunications to the inhabitants. The goal is to put the population in as much difficulty as possible and create an energy crisis in the country while the climatic conditions are becoming increasingly difficult due to the arrival of winter.
The inhabitants of Kiev have by now become accustomed to frequent blackouts and in general to very precarious living conditions, but they try to lead a normal life after all: many still go to work, for example. However, in recent days things have become even more difficult: temperatures have dropped considerably and the current lack of electricity and heating is having more problematic consequences than usual, in addition to the fact that the situation affects more and more people.
The water shortages in the city in recent days have been so vast that several people have tried to recover some from the rainwater drain pipes, while there are always very long queues at public points for water distribution, with the people who can at most fill one or two plastic bottles each. It helped a little that Thursday, the day after the last bombing, it rained in Kiev, after a few days where it had only snowed.
These are hard conditions to believe for a city like Kiev, which before the start of the war was a large and modern capital of about 3 million inhabitants. The journalists of Associated Press on site they told that people are seeking refuge en masse in the very few bars that for some reason still have water and electricity. People write to friends and relatives to find out if at least one of the two things is still working, and if so, they organize to get everyone together where they can warm up or bring some water with them.
In one of the bars visited by Associated Press a 34-year-old from Kiev said that in the morning, before going to work, she uses two glasses of water to take a sort of shower and keeps her hair tied up to avoid washing it.
Meanwhile teams of energy engineers and workers are at work trying to restore the main infrastructures: Thursday morning 70 percent of the city was without electricity and in two days it went to 60, while water began to return in many homes, albeit with very low pressure.
Difficulties such as those that occurred in Kiev also affected many other cities throughout the Ukraine, again as a result of Russian bombing. Kherson, the city recently retaken by the Ukrainian army, was among those that suffered the heaviest attacks: residential buildings and shops were hit, and the hospital itself was left without water and electricity.
In view of winter and with the situation likely to worsen, the Ukrainian authorities have decided to open thousands of heated places of refuge throughout the country, where people can go to ask for a hot meal, electricity or internet connection. They have been called “invincibility points” and there are currently more than 3,700.
On Friday, the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, did he know that the European Union will send substantial aid to Ukraine, both to restore the damaged infrastructure and to preserve it. The aid will also be used to keep the new “invincibility points” in operation. Von der Leyen said the European donations will include 200 medium-sized power transformers, two autotransformers (one large and one medium-sized) and 40 large power generators, capable alone of providing uninterrupted power to a small- and medium size.
Russian bombings targeting civilian infrastructure have been widely condemned by many international human rights groups and Western leaders, including French President Emmanuel Macron, who called them war crimes. Russia has acknowledged that it has systematically targeted them, openly presenting them as part of a war strategy to discourage arms shipments to Ukraine and its surrender. Dmitri Peskov, spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin, said that it would be enough for the Ukrainian government to satisfy the Russian demands, i.e. surrender, to “put an end to all possible suffering of the civilian population”.
