About 1.5 million Odessa residents without power for ‘weeks’
About 1.5 million residents of Odessa and its region in southern Ukraine have lost power since Saturday night following the Russian attack. According to local authorities, the energy grid will take “weeks” to be repaired. Discover, hour by hour, the course of the day of December 11th.
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11:00pm: emergency teams work to restore power in some areas
Emergency teams are working to relieve power shortages facing many parts of Ukraine after the Russian attack, including on the Black Sea port of Odessa, President Volodymyr Zelensky said.
“At the moment, it is possible to partially restore supplies in Odessa and other cities and districts of the region,” he said in his evening video address.
Russian troops used Iranian-made drones to attack two power plants in Odessa on Saturday, knocking out power to some 1.5 million customers, nearly all of the non-critical infrastructure in and around the port.
Volodymyr Zelensky said Odessa was “one of the areas with the most frequent power outages”. Other areas facing “very difficult” power supply conditions include the capital Kyiv and its territories, four regions in western Ukraine, and Dnipropetrovsk in the center of the country.
Work to restore electricity for the general public is constant, according to the Ukrainian president.
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18:06: Experts help Ukraine investigate sexual violence
A team of international legal advisers have been working in recent days with local prosecutors in the city of Kherson, which was recently released by the Ukrainian military, to gather evidence of alleged sex crimes committed by Russian forces.
The team consists of experts from Global Rights Compliance, an international law firm headquartered in The Hague.
Their mission is part of a wider international effort to support Ukrainian authorities in their work to prove that Russia has been committing crimes since the beginning of the conflict, nearly ten months ago.
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17:09: Odessa port is out of action after the Russian attack
The port of Odessa in Ukraine is not functioning after the Russian attack on the region’s power grid, but grain traders should be able to resume their exports, Agriculture Minister Mykola Solsky told Reuters.
Two other ports – Chornomorsk and Pivdennyi – which were authorized to export grain from Ukraine under an agreement between Moscow and Kyiv, were partially operational, he said in a telephone interview.
According to Mykola Solsky, the port of Odessa is currently not being used because the electricity generator has not been turned on. Grain traders, meanwhile, continued to ship their produce through the other two ports, he said.
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3:31 p.m.: Macron talks with Zelensky before a conference for Ukraine, Tuesday in Paris
“Together with President Zelensky, we have prepared conferences that France will organize on Tuesday: the first, international, to meet the needs of Ukraine getting through the winter, and the second with French companies involved in the country’s reconstruction,” the French president said on Twitter.
“We synchronized our positions ahead of the virtual G7 summit and support conference in Paris. We discussed the implementation of our ten-point plan for peace, cooperation in defense and energy stability,” the Ukrainian president tweeted.
Volodymyr Zelensky will intervene in the video during this conference on Tuesday “for the resilience and reconstruction of Ukraine”, while his Prime Minister will attend.
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14:20: Putin and Erdogan discuss gas projects between Russia and Turkey
Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart Tayyip Recep Erdogan discussed joint energy projects on Sunday, including in the gas sector, two Russian news agencies reported citing the Kremlin.
Telephone discussions between the two leaders focused on setting up a regional gas center in Turkey, according to the Ria and Ifax agencies.
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1 p.m.: in Kherson, Russian “collaborator” hunt
After eight months of occupation by Russian forces, a climate of suspicion reigned in Kherson, where Ukrainian authorities still fear the presence of individuals who would cooperate, if not still, with the Russians, and seek to identify them.
Kherson now lives under strict police control, which is very real and visible. Screening points at city exits, patrolling the streets: men in blue check identity papers, ask questions, search car trunks, to expel “collaborators”.
“These people stayed here for more than eight months. They worked for the Russian regime and now we have information and documents about each of them. Our police know everything about them and each one of them will be punished,” the governor said Kherson region, Yaroslav Yanushevich. AFP.
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12:28 p.m.: Two people are killed by Russian shelling in the Kherson area, according to the governor
Two people were killed and five others injured in Russian bombing targeting the Kherson region in southern Ukraine, its governor Yaroslav Yanushevich said Sunday.
“The enemy has attacked residential areas of Kherson again,” he said on his Telegram account, saying that Russian soldiers had attacked maternity hospitals, cafes and apartment buildings.
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10:02 am: Former Russian President Medvedev confirms that Moscow is speeding up production of its “most powerful” weapons
Russia’s former president and current Security Council No. 2 person, Dmitry Medvedev, said on Sunday that Moscow created “the most powerful means of destruction” based on “new principles”, threatening to use them against the West.
“Our enemy is rooted not only in the Kyiv Government (administrative territorial entity of the Russian Empire, editor’s note) […] He was also in Europe, North America, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and other places that have pledged allegiance to the Nazis in our time,” he wrote. “This is why we are increasing the production of the most powerful means of destruction , including those based on the principle -new principles,” he continued in a message posted Sunday morning on his Telegram account.
He did not elaborate on these new principles, but appeared to be referring specifically to a new generation of hypersonic weapons that Moscow is proud of having actively developed in recent years.
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8:20 a.m.: in Odessa, residents are still without power after the Russian attack
“The situation in the Odessa region is very difficult. After the night attack by Iranian drones, Odessa and other cities in the region were plunged into darkness,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his daily social media video.
“At this hour, more than one and a half million people in the Odessa region are without electricity. Only essential infrastructure is connected – if it is possible to have electricity,” he added. .
The local government service indicated that repairs to the energy grid after the strike last night would take “weeks” and urged residents of this major port city who could leave the area.
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04:36: Russia accuses Ukraine of attacking Melitopol
Ukraine attacked the southeastern city of Melitopol late Saturday, said the pro-Kremlin authorities controlling the city and Ukrainian authorities in exile said.
Local authorities set up by the Russian occupation say two people were killed and ten injured after the missile strike. “The air defense system destroyed two missiles, four more hit their targets,” Yevgeni Balitsky, head of the pro-Russian authorities in Zaporizhia, told Telegram.
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4:13 am: the city of Bakhmout is “destroyed”
Russian forces have “turned the city of Bakhmut into ruins”, President Volodymyr Zelensky said, while the Ukrainian military reported missile, rocket and aircraft attacks in several parts of the country on Saturday. “The situation remains very difficult” in several cities on the frontline, the Ukrainian president added in a late night video address.
With AFP
