UN briefing warns winter and strikes on power infrastructure are deepening Ukraine’s humanitarian crisis

Joyice Muswea briefed the council that continued missile and drone strikes across Ukraine have exacted a heavy toll on civilians and critical services as winter deepens. She said strikes often occur at night in freezing temperatures and “kill and injure civilians,” while damage to energy systems is producing prolonged blackouts that cut heat and water to entire apartment blocks.

Muswea said recent strikes hit critical energy infrastructure in Kharkiv, Odesa and the Dnipro region, and that repair teams cannot keep pace with the damage. She warned that rolling blackouts of 12 to 18 hours in several oblasts are leaving families without heat and water and that a missile strike in Odesa last week destroyed a substation that also served a displacement centre.

Quoting a clinician on frontline effects, Muswea…