The Ukrainian authorities called today, Saturday, December 3, the population to “hold fast” against the power outages that now define their daily life after the Russian strikes of the last few weeks that have caused great damage to the national electricity grid.
As of Monday (5/12), I will ask Oblenergo [a provider] to look at the area’s timetables again. There will most likely be a four-hour outage,” the governor of the Mykolayiv (southern) region, Vitaly Kim, said on Telegram.
He described an “increased consumption” of electricity, which he said is expected to make longer outages necessary to relieve the regional power grid. “We must hold fast,” he told the residents of his area.
Russia has been launching massive bombings of Ukrainian energy facilities since October, causing severe damage and blackouts affecting millions of Ukrainians, plunging them into darkness and cold every day.
In the military field, the fighting is “tough” in the eastern part of the country, because “the Russians had time to prepare” for the Kiev attacks, the governor of the Luhansk region, Serhii Haidai, said on Ukrainian television.
“The Ukrainian armed forces are slowly advancing through the Russian defense in the direction of Svatone-Kremina,” he noted, however, without giving any other details.
According to a morning bulletin of the Ukrainian army, the situation is “difficult” near Bakhmut, in the Donetsk region, which the Russians are trying to conquer without succeeding so far.
The battle around this city took on a more symbolic meaning for Russian officials as its capture would come after a series of humiliating defeats, with retreats from Kharkov (northeast) in September and Kherson (south) in November.
The same “difficulties” are encountered by Kiev’s troops in the Kherson region (south), from where the Russian army partially withdrew in November, saying it wants to consolidate its positions.
“The Russians bombed Kherson (and) destroyed the electrical networks”, one can read in the report made public this morning.
