Thousands without heating on icy night in Ukraine as Russia attacks before talks

More than 1,000 residential buildings in Kyiv were without heating on Tuesday after a massive Russian air attack during one of the coldest nights of the winter, with temperatures in the capital falling to -20C.Overnight, the Kremlin fired 450 attack drones and more than 70 missiles across the country. The strikes caused damage in five Kyiv districts and injured at least nine people. Flames consumed an apartment on the upper floors of a Kyiv building.An air raid alert stayed in effect for more than five hours. Residents reported a series of loud explosions beginning at about 1am.Ukraine’s leader, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said the cynical attacks showed Vladimir Putin was uninterested in peace, before the latest round of talks on Wednesday and Thursday in Abu Dhabi between Russia, Ukraine and the US.“Taking advantage of the coldest days of winter to terrorise people is more important to Russia than turning to diplomacy,” Zelenskyy said. He called on western partners to step up the supply of missiles for air defence systems in order to protect “normal life”.An apartment building hit by a Russian drone strike in Kyiv. Photograph: Valentyn Ogirenko/Reuters“Without pressure on Russia, this war will not end. Now Moscow is choosing terror and escalation, and that’s why maximum pressure is needed,” he wrote on social media.Last Thursday, Donald Trump said he had made a personal request to the Russian president to stop hitting Kyiv and “various towns” for a week because of the exceptionally cold weather. “He agreed to do that. And I have to tell you I was very nice,” Trump said.The Kremlin announced the truce would last only until Sunday. According to Ukraine, Russia continued to fire during this period. Among the infrastructure hit overnight were facilities to heat water for distribution to Ukrainian homes.“Hundreds of thousands of families, including children, were deliberately left without heating during the harshest winter conditions, with temperatures dropping to -25C,” the Ukrainian energy minister, Denys Shmyhal, wrote on X.Ukraine said the attack had also damaged the Motherland monument, a Soviet-era second world war memorial. The 62-metre titanium statue of a mother holding a sword and a shield with a Ukrainian trident looms above the city and the Dnipro River, which has frozen over.The Motherland monument in Kyiv pictured in January. Photograph: Efrem Lukatsky/AP“It is both symbolic and cynical: the aggressor state strikes at a place of remembrance of the struggle against aggression in the 20th century, repeating its crimes in the 21st century,” the culture minister, Tetyana Berezhna, wrote on Facebook.The latest trilateral peace talks in Abu Dhabi take place amid reports that Ukraine has agreed a multi-tier plan with its allies for enforcing any ceasefire with Russia. The plan was discussed in December and January by Ukrainian, European and US officials.According to the FT, citing sources involved in the negotiations, a Russian violation of the truce would trigger a response within 24 hours. This would initially involve a diplomatic warning followed, if necessary, by Ukrainian army action to restore a ceasefire.If hostilities continued after 72 hours, Ukraine, together with its allies, would move to a second stage. It would involve a military response from the coalition of the willing, and include American forces.Tuesday’s attacks took place across Ukraine. In Kyiv, 1,170 buildings were without power. In the north-eastern city of Kharkiv, the mayor, Ihor Terekhov, said energy infrastructure had been damaged. More than 800 buildings were without heat, as water was drained from radiator systems to stop them freezing in the bitter cold.“The goal is obvious: to cause maximum destruction and leave the city without heat in severe cold,” Terekhov wrote on Telegram. The deputy prime minister Oleksiy Kuleba said 110,000 properties in Kharkiv had been left without heating after the attack.Workers installing anti-drone nets over a road in icy conditions near Kharkiv on Monday. Photograph: Vyacheslav Madiyevskyy/ReutersThe public broadcaster Suspilne also said Russian strikes had knocked out electricity in two towns in the Kharkiv region, Izium and Balakliia, and struck two apartment buildings in the northern city of Sumy.Russian propagandists have been celebrating the Kremlin’s deliberate destruction of Ukraine’s energy grid in recent weeks – a war crime.“We have driven Ukraine into the stone age. Terrifying cold is approaching. The energy system is extremely sensitive to imbalance,” the presenter Vladimir Solovyov told state TV. He predicted Kyiv would become “a giant cess pool”.