Arya News - Vladimir Putin was accused of waiting for temperatures in Kyiv to plunge to -20C before unleashing hundreds of missiles and drones, cutting power to more than 1,000 buildings on the coldest night of the year.
Vladimir Putin was accused of waiting for temperatures in Kyiv to plunge to -20C before unleashing hundreds of missiles and drones, cutting power to more than 1,000 buildings on the coldest night of the year.
Around 450 drones and more than 60 missiles – including Zircon, Kh-32 and Iskander-M cruise and ballistic weapons – struck cities including Kyiv in what Ukraine said was a calculated effort to inflict maximum suffering on civilians.
High-rise apartment blocks, a nursery and Kyiv’s towering Soviet-era Motherland monument were hit, along with power substations . The Telegraph heard dozens of explosions echo across the capital after a ballistic missile warning shortly after 1am.
Air raid alerts remained in place until just before 8am as successive waves of drones and missiles continued. On Tuesday morning, sirens sounded again after Russia launched further strikes on the Chernihiv, Kyiv and Zhytomyr regions.
An apartment building damaged by the missile and drone attack in Kyiv - Vladyslav Musiienko/Getty Images
“Putin waited for the temperatures to drop and stockpiled drones and missiles to continue his genocidal attacks against the Ukrainian people,” said Andrii Sybiha, Ukraine’s foreign minister.
“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. We are dealing with terrorists who must be forced to stop violence.”
Women clean debris in a school’s dance classroom in Kyiv damaged by the air attack - Vladyslav Musiienko/Getty Images
At least nine people were injured in the attacks, which also hit Kharkiv, Odesa, Dnipro, Sumy and Vinnytsia. In Kharkiv, power was cut to about 100,000 residents as temperatures fell to -23C.
The combined attack came after a short-lived energy ceasefire, which followed an announcement by Donald Trump, the US president, that Vladimir Putin , the Russian president, had agreed to halt aerial attacks on major Ukrainian cities during the “horrendously cold” week-long period.
A police officer carries a part of a Russian suicide drone that was found at the site of an apartment building in Kyiv - Valentyn Ogirenko/Reuters
A woman and a child take shelter at a metro station in Kyiv during a Russian air attack - Serhii Okunev/Getty Images
On Friday, the Kremlin clarified that the truce, designed to “create favourable conditions for negotiations”, would only hold until Sunday, just as temperatures were set to plummet once again after a brief period of respite.
“Taking advantage of the coldest days of winter to terrorise people is more important to Russia than turning to diplomacy,” said Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, on social media.
Moscow has been targeting Ukraine’s energy grid for some two months in an effort to freeze Ukrainians into submission, cutting power to tens of thousands of homes and forcing hundreds of thousands of residents to flee Kyiv.
Denys Shmyhal, the energy minister, accused Russia of committing a “crime against humanity”, adding: “Hundreds of thousands of families, including children, were deliberately left without heat during the harshest winter frosts.”
Tetyana Berezhna, Ukraine’s culture minister, said the museum at the foot of the city’s Motherland monument, which swapped its Soviet heraldry for a symbol of Ukraine’s national trident in 2023, had also been struck.
“It is both symbolic and cynical: the aggressor state strikes at a place of remembrance of the struggle against aggression in the 20th century, repeating its crimes in the 21st century,” she said.
US-backed talks in Abu Dhabi
Ukrainian and Russian delegations will meet for a second round of US-backed talks in Abu Dhabi on Wednesday.
The negotiations, which failed to produce a breakthrough, will focus on territory, the most contentious issue in talks, with Russia continuing to push for full control of the eastern Donetsk region.
Ukraine fears that Russia would use the territory to reconstitute itself for a future offensive and has said it cannot concede land without a referendum.
Mr Zelensky has also stated that he was willing to meet Putin for high-level bilateral talks, but Moscow on Monday ruled out any such talks unless they take place in Moscow.
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