Technicians worked around the clock to restore electricity in most parts of Ukraine following a devastating wave of Russian strikes, private energy firm DTEK said on March 10, as Ukrainian fighters continued their staunch months-long defense of the eastern city of Bakhmut in Donetsk region.
Electricity was restored in all residential areas of the capital, Kyiv, and all emergency power outages were canceled, DTEK said on March 10.
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“At 12:47 p.m., electricity was restored to all residents of the capital, so the scheduled stabilization shutdowns are no longer applicable,” the company said in a statement.
DTEK workers managed to finish the overnight repairs on the damaged high-voltage equipment that supplies the southern port of Odesa and the Odesa region, where the electricity has been restored, the company said.
Power restrictions prompted by significant damage caused by the Russian strikes remained in the Zhytomyr and Kharkiv regions, where hourly shutdown schedules have to be imposed, state electricity company Ukrenerho reported on March 10.
Some consumers in the two regions are still left completely without electricity, and critical infrastructure in the cities of Zhytomyr and Kharkiv operates mainly from autonomous power sources, Ukrenerho said.
Emergency shutdowns are still taking place in other two regions — Zaporizhzhya and Dnipropetrovsk — that sustained damage in the Russian strikes, it said.
Following the wave of attacks on Ukrainian civilian targets — the first of its kind since mid-February — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy accused Russia of persisting in using terror against civilians.
“The occupiers can only terrorize civilians. That’s all they can do. But it won’t help them. They won’t avoid responsibility for everything they have done,” Zelenskiy said after the attacks.
IN PHOTOS: Russia launched a massive wave of air strikes on Ukraine on March 9, causing casualties and multiple power cuts across the country and halting the power supply of the nuclear power plant at Zaporizhzhya as the battle for Bakhmut in the east raged on.
Russia Launches Deadly Air Strikes On Ukrainian Cities
Russia launched a massive wave of air strikes on Ukraine on March 9, causing casualties and multiple power cuts across the country and halting the power supply of the nuclear power plant at Zaporizhzhya as the battle for Bakhmut in the east raged on.
Russia has repeatedly denied targeting civilians, despite abundant evidence to the contrary.
It said the attacks, during which it used hypersonic Kinzhal (Dagger) missiles, were a “massive retaliatory strike” in response to what it said was a Ukrainian-orchestrated “terrorist attack” in Russia’s Bryansk region, which borders Ukraine, last week.
Kyiv has denied any involvement, suggesting Moscow might be seeking a “false flag” pretext to stage new attacks on Ukraine.
White House spokeswoman Olivia Dalton said it was “devastating to see these brutal, unjustified attacks on civilian infrastructure across Ukraine,” and said the United States would continue to supply Kyiv with air-defense systems.
On the battlefield, Russian forces launched 102 attacks in and around Bakhmut in an attempt to encircle the city, the General Staff of the Armed Forces reported in its daily bulletin early on March 10.
Fierce fighting was under way in other parts of Donetsk region, with focus on the towns of Lyman, Avdiyivka, and Shakhtarsk, the military said.
In Rubizhny, in the neighboring Luhansk region, the Ukrainian military said that Russians used civilians as human shields.
“The enemy places personnel in residential quarters, hiding behind the civilian population. Servicemen of the occupying forces are housed on the first and second floors, and civilians are left to live above,” the General Staff said.
