More than 500 Ukrainian cities were still without power on Sunday after Russian strikes in recent weeks caused extensive damage to the country’s power grid, an interior ministry official said, according to AFP.

“The enemy continues to attack the main objects of the country’s infrastructure. Currently, 507 settlements in eight regions of our country have been cut off from electricity supply,” First Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs Yevhen Yenin said on Ukrainian television.

In particular, “the Kharkiv region was the most affected, where 112 villages were isolated; in Donetsk and Kherson regions – more than 90; Mykolayiv region: 82; Zaporizhzhia region: 76; Luhansk region – 43,” he said.

On Saturday, the Ukrainian authorities again called on peaceful citizens to resist, despite the deterioration of living conditions.

The governor of the southern Mykolaiv region, Vitaliy Kim, said on television that “we must endure until several times a day power outages plunge millions of Ukrainians into darkness, not to mention the cold that settles in us, with negative temperatures. for a few days.”

The prospect of further Russian strikes on Ukraine’s energy grid raises concerns about a particularly difficult winter for the civilian population and a new wave of refugees from the country.

(article photo: ©Maryna Zhukova|Dreamstime.com)