Nine people died in Ukraine on Tuesday in house fires caused by candles, generators and gas stoves Ukrainians use to warm themselves due to power outages, emergency services said today.

Since October, Russia has bombed Ukraine’s energy infrastructure on a massive scale, causing serious damage and power cuts to millions of Ukrainians every day.

131 fires in one day

“Only yesterday (Tuesday) we had 131 fires in Ukraine, 106 of them in private homes. Nine people died, eight were injured,” the agency said in a Facebook post. Rescuers noted that the most common causes of fires and explosions are “ burning candles”, “cylinders (liquefied gas) in apartments” and “power generators on balconies”.

Ukrainians are forced to resort to these means in order to have light or keep warm during hours when electricity is cut off in their homes.

Earlier today, from Bucharest, Romania, Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba stressed the need to quickly rebuild his country’s energy infrastructure and urged Kyiv’s allies to provide the necessary equipment, transformers and generators.

US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken called Russia’s strikes on Ukraine’s political infrastructure “barbaric.”

^{Source: APE-MEB, AFP.}