Russia strikes Ukraine power plant in barrage

Russia battered Ukraine with more than two dozen missiles and hundreds of drones early yesterday, killing four people and pummelling another power plant, piling more pressure on Ukraine’s brittle energy system.

An AFP journalist in the eastern Kharkiv region, where four people were killed, saw firefighters battling a fire at a postal hub and rescue workers helping survivors by lamp light in freezing temperatures.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said “several hundred thousand” households near Kyiv were without power after the strikes, and again called on allies to bolster his country’s air defence systems.

“The world can respond to this Russian terror with new assistance packages for Ukraine,” President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on social media. “Russia must come to learn that cold will not help it win the war,” he added.

Authorities in Kyiv and the surrounding region rolled out emergency power cuts in the hours after the attack, saying freezing temperatures were complicating their work.