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Under Missile Strikes, Ukrainians Haul Water, While Surgeons Work in the Dark


KYIV, Ukraine — In a crowded operating room, surgeons made a long incision down the middle of the child’s chest, cutting off the breastbone to widen the rib cage and reach the heart. Then the light went out.

Generators were turned on to keep life-support equipment running on Wednesday night, with nurses and surgical assistants holding flashlights shining on the operating table, guiding surgeons as they worked. they cut and cut, trying to save the child’s life in almost complete darkness.

“So far we are dealing on our own,” said Borys Todurov, clinic director of the Heart Institute in Kiev. “But every hour becomes more difficult. There has been no water for several hours now. We continue to perform only emergency operations.”

In an increasingly destructive campaign to beat up Ukrainian civilians by cutting off their electricity and running water, Russia hit Ukrainians this week with a wave of rocket attacks, one of the most disruptive. For many weeks. Ukraine’s engineers and emergency teams worked hard on Thursday to restore services amid snowfall, cold rain and power outages. And across the country, people deal with deprivations.

When surgeons wore headlights to work in the dark, the miners were pulled from deep underground with manual winches. Residents of high-rise apartment buildings carry buckets and bottles of water up the stairs of buildings where elevators stop working, shops and restaurants turn off generators or light candles to resume business.

Although Ukrainians expressed opposition to Russia’s efforts to weaken their resolve amid worsening cold weather, millions remained without power on Thursday night as the attacks Russia’s persistent missiles cause increasing damage. Ukrainian authorities said at least 10 people were killed on Wednesday. After each missile attack, repairs become more difficult, outages last longer, and the danger to the public increases.

Herman Galushchenko, Ukraine’s Energy Minister admitted: “The situation is difficult across the country. By 4 a.m., he said, engineers had managed to “unify the energy system,” allowing power to be delivered to critical infrastructure.

The attack on wednesday, which injured dozens of people, appears to be one of the most disruptive attacks in weeks. Are from an explosion on 8 October on the Kerch Strait Bridgelinking occupied Crimea with Russia, the Russian military fired about 600 missiles at power plants, hydroelectric facilities, pumping stations and water treatment facilities, as well as high-voltage cables around the plants. Nuclear power and important substations provide electricity for dozens of people. millions of homes and businesses, according to Ukrainian officials.

Wednesday’s strikes shut down all of Ukraine’s nuclear power plants for the first time, depriving the country of one of the country’s most important sources of energy. But the energy minister said authorities expect factories to be back up and running soon, “so the deficit will decrease”.

The Kremlin on Thursday denied that its attacks were aimed at civilians. Spokesman Dmitri S. Peskov said, “we are talking about infrastructure goals that are directly or indirectly related to Ukraine’s military potential,” according to the Russian newspaper. News organ.

He added that the Ukrainian leadership “has every opportunity to return the situation to normal, every opportunity to resolve the situation in a way that meets the requirements of the Russian side and, accordingly, every opportunity to put an end to the suffering of the peaceful population.”

Ukraine’s President, Volodymyr Zelensky, has rejected any proposals for a ceasefire or peace talks at this point, saying Moscow’s war goals have not changed and that a pause in hostilities will only giving the Russian military time to regroup after recent setbacks.

In mid-October, President Vladimir V. Putin said attacks on nearly a dozen Ukrainian cities is revenge for the truck bombing of the Kerch Bridge, and since then, the Russian military has increasingly targeted civilian infrastructure.

But the missile strikes also reflected Russia’s persistent struggle on the battlefield, as its ground forces withdrew from the country. thousands of square miles in northeastern Ukraine in September and then from a large southern city in November. Trying to fortify its lines on the ground – even with poorly trained, newly mobilized recruits – the Russian military used long-range missile strikes such as a means of deflecting domestic criticism and inflicting pain on the defensive.

Ukraine has used Western-supplied weapons to fend off the attacks, while begging for more aid. General Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, the top commander of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, said Ukrainian air defenses shot down 51 of 67 Russian cruise missiles fired on Wednesday and five of 10 drones.

Mr. Zelenskiy, Wednesday night speech at an emergency session of the United Nations Security Council, condemned what he called Russia’s terrorist campaign.

“When the outside temperature drops below zero degrees Celsius and tens of millions of people have no electricity, no heat and no water as a result of Russian missiles hitting energy facilities,” he said, “it’s obvious,” he said. is a crime against humanity”.

On Thursday, it remained unclear whether his new appeal would bring diplomats from the European Union closer to a final deal to help limit Russia’s oil revenue, an effort efforts encouraged by the Biden administration to cut Russia’s war funding.

Officials from all 27 EU member states met late Wednesday evening without settling on the highest price that traders, shippers and other companies in the supply chain can pay for oil of Russia is sold outside the bloc. This policy must be in place before the EU embargo on Russian oil imports comes into effect on December 5.

The embargo applies only to the 27-nation bloc. So, to further limit Russia’s financial interests, the group wants to limit the amount buyers outside the region have to pay for Russian oil. That crude oil can only be sold outside of Europe and will have to be below the agreed price. Russia has repeatedly said it will ignore a policy that analysts say will be difficult to enforce.

EU ambassadors have been asked to set prices between $65 and $70 per barrel and to be flexible in enforcing the limit.

The benchmark for Russian oil prices, known as the Urals mix, has traded between $60 and $100 a barrel for the past three years. Over the past three months, prices have ranged from $65 to $75 a barrel, suggesting that EU policy will be of little immediate help in easing the worldwide cost of living crisis.

As EU residents brace for a winter of high energy prices and rationing of supplies, Ukrainians increasingly have to live with prolonged blackouts and water shortages as a result of the direct damage of the war. .

In Kiev as of Thursday afternoon, about one in four homes remained without electricity and more than half of the city’s residents had no running water, according to city officials. City officials say service is slowly being restored and they are confident that the pumps that supply water to about three million residents will be restored by the end of the day.

But the blackout created potentially dangerous conditions across the country. The scene at Kyiv hospital is reminiscent of scenes in medical facilities around Ukraine, a vivid illustration of the cumulative damage that Russian attacks are inflicting on civilians far from the front lines.

Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy chief of staff to the president of Ukraine, said on the messaging app Telegram that two kidney transplant surgeries were being performed at the Cherkasy Regional Cancer Center in central Ukraine when the lights went out. He said the generators were turned on and the transplant was successful.

Christopher Stokes, the head of Doctors Without Borders in Ukraine, said that attacks on infrastructure were putting “millions of civilians at risk”. They can create a vicious cycle in which people living without heat and clean water are more likely to need medical care but that care itself is harder to provide.

“Energy cuts and water disruptions will also affect people’s ability to access health care as hospitals and health centers struggle to operate,” he said.

Marc Santora reports from Kiev, Ukraine, and Thomas Gibbons-Neff and Natalya Yermak From Dnipro, Ukraine Report contributed by Matina Stevis-Gridneff from Brussels, Jim Tankersley and Alan Rappeport from Washington and Alan Yuhas from New York.

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