A Russian air attack cut power to more than one million Kyiv residents and impacted substations carrying power from Ukraine's atomic plants on Tuesday.
Drone and missile strikes killed four people- three in the southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia and one in the Kyiv region surrounding the capital. Other regions in the east, south and north of Ukraine also came under attack.
The attack was Russia's second this month on the Ukrainian capital.
Tens of thousands of emergency workers have been toiling round the clock to restore power and heating, with overnight temperatures dipping to -13 Celsius (9 Fahrenheit).
"In Kyiv alone, as of this evening, more than one million households remain without power," President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address.
"And a significant number of buildings have no heating, more than 4,000 apartment buildings."
The United Nations' atomic watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said several substations critical for nuclear safety were affected by the attack, while power lines to some other nuclear plants were impacted.
Ukraine gets more than half of its electricity from nuclear power.
The Chornobyl plant, the site of the world's worst civil nuclear catastrophe, had also lost all off-site power on Tuesday morning, the International Atomic Energy Agency added. Kyiv later said the plant had been reconnected.
"While Russian officials speak about the 'importance' of power lines, their forces deliberately strike substations, directly endangering nuclear safety," said Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha.
Authorities in the northern region of Chernihiv bordering Russia said 87% of the population was without power.
Russia said it had attacked military-industrial, energy and transport targets in support of the army.
Tuesday's strikes followed a new round of peace talks at the weekend between U.S. and Ukrainian officials in a U.S.-backed diplomatic push for which Russia has shown little enthusiasm.
In the Swiss resort of Davos, where the World Economic Forum is taking place, envoys for U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin said their meeting on a possible peace deal to end the war had been "very positive" and "constructive."
Zelenskyy urged the U.S. to pile more pressure on Moscow, saying it had "not yet had the strength" to stop Russia.
"Can America do more? It can, and we really want this, and we believe that the Americans are capable of doing this," he told reporters in a WhatsApp media chat.
Ukraine’s power grid further damaged
The power and heating cuts have forced Kyiv residents to bundle up inside their homes and improvise ways to stay warm, such as heating bricks or pitching tents indoors.
Water supplies, disrupted east of the Dnipro River in the capital for a time, were later restored, Kuleba said.
Speaking in Davos on Tuesday, Economy Minister Oleksiy Sobolev said Russia had damaged around 8.5 gigawatts of power generation capacity since late October.
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Denmark will hold a parliamentary election on 24 March, Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen announced on Thursday (26 February), as she seeks to capitalise on a surge in support for her defiant stance against U.S. pressure over Greenland.
The Secretary-General of the United Nations, António Guterres, has called for an immediate, full and unconditional ceasefire in Ukraine, describing the conflict as “a stain on our collective conscience”.
Russia has fully blocked WhatsApp for failing to comply with local legislation, the Kremlin said on Thursday, marking a sharp escalation in Moscow’s campaign to tighten control over foreign technology platforms.
A senior Russian military intelligence officer is recovering in hospital after being shot several times in Moscow, as investigators prepare to interrogate two suspects in what appears to be the latest assassination attempt targeting Russia’s top military ranks since the start of the war in Ukraine.
The Kremlin is utilising the recent United States and Israeli military strikes on Iran to validate its ongoing war in Ukraine. Russian officials are pointing to the escalation in the Middle East as evidence that Western nations do not adhere to international rules.
Saudi Arabia’s state oil giant Saudi Aramco closed its Ras Tanura refinery on Monday following an Iranian drone strike, an industry source told Reuters as Tehran retaliated across the Gulf after a U.S.-Israeli attack on Iranian targets over the weekend.
U.S. President Donald Trump said the U.S. military has enough stockpiled weapons to fight wars "forever"; in a social media post late on Monday. The remarks came hours before conflict in Iran and the Middle East entered its fourth day.
Türkiye raised its security level for Turkish-flagged vessels in the Strait of Hormuz to Level 3 on Sunday (2 March). The development follows Iranian restrictions on shipping after U.S. and Israeli strikes and confirmation of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s death.
China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi has held talks with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov following recent military strikes carried out by the United States and Israel on targets in Iran, as tensions in the Middle East continue to rise.
Strikes across the Middle East are intensifying, fuelling travel disruption, driving up global energy prices and forcing diplomatic missions to shut their doors.
U.S. President Donald Trump has said the United States has a “virtually unlimited supply” of munitions and is capable of sustaining military action indefinitely, as the conflict with Iran entered its fourth day.
The United Nations has called for an investigation into a deadly attack on a girls’ primary school in Iran, which Iranian officials say has killed more than 100 children. The U.S. has said its forces “would not” deliberately target a school.
U.S. first lady, Melania Trump chaired a UN Security Council meeting on children and education in conflict on Monday (2 March), a move criticised by Iran as hypocritical following U.S. and Israeli strikes that triggered a UN warning about risks to children.
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