Arya News - A week-long pause in strikes on Ukraine amid peace talks came to an abrupt end after Russian forces unleashed a massive drone and missile assault.
Feb. 3 (UPI) -- Russian forces resumed large-scale attacks on Ukraine overnight, launching 450 drones and more than 60 missiles against energy and residential targets in cities across the country including Kyiv, Kharkiv, Sumy, Dnipro and Odesa, amid extreme winter conditions.
In a post on X , Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of using a pause in strikes requested by U.S. President Donald Trump to stockpile weapons to wait for temperatures to drop to their lowest of the winter to launch fresh "genocidal attacks against the Ukrainian people."
"Neither anticipated diplomatic efforts in Abu Dhabi this week nor his promises to the United States kept him from continuing terror against ordinary people in the harshest winter," wrote Sybiha who called for the world to help strengthen Ukraine"s air defenses and energy resilience and cut Russia"s war machine off from energy revenues and western technology.
"Isolate the Russian regime. Stop and confiscate Russia"s illegal oil tankers," he urged.
The temperature fell to -4 degrees Fahrenheit overnight in Ukraine and was expected to hit a low of -11 F in Kyiv first thing Tuesday.
President Zelensky said in a post on X that nine people had been injured across the country, but that the main target of the attacks was Ukraine"s energy facilities.
At least five of those hurt were in Kyiv, two of whom were being treated in the hospital, Ukraine National Police said in a social media update , after at least three apartment blocks were damaged as well as other buildings, including administrative offices, a kindergarten, a warehouse and a gas station.
Private energy provider DTEK said its thermal power stations had been attacked and equipment at the plants was "significantly damaged," but provided no specific details.
However, it said a separate strike in the Odessa region had badly damaged an energy facility operated by its sister company, DTEK Odessa Power Grids, cutting the electricity supply to residential and business customers.
It said emergency response crews were working flat out to restore electricity to homes as soon as possible.
In Kharkiv in the northeast, Ukraine"s second largest city, authorities threw open more than 100 emergency shelters to residents of more than 800 apartment buildings after the city"s largest Combined Heat and Power plant was badly damaged during a three-hour-long attack.
Apologizing on social media , Mayor Ihor Terekhov said engineers were forced to drain coolant from the heating system in the buildings to prevent the network from freezing.
"I understand how difficult it is in twenty-degree frost," he wrote.
The strikes overnight came after a 10-day relative lull in Russian attacks amid a flurry of activity on the diplomatic front that began on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum and ended up bringing Russia, Ukraine and the United States around a table in Abu Dhabi to talk peace for the first time on Jan. 23.
Moscow subsequently acquiesced to Trump"s request for a week-long halt to its attacks on Kyiv and various other unspecified cities and towns during the unprecedented cold snap enveloping the country, amid some confusion with Moscow claiming Friday the pause only covered Kyiv and only through Monday.
Trump revealed Thursday that he had requested the pause and that it had been accepted, but did not say when he made the request.
A second round of U.S.-brokered trilateral peace talks is set to get underway in Abu Dhabi on Wednesday as the fourth anniversary of the conflict approaches.
Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022.