Russian Strikes Knock Out Heat in Kyiv, Zelenskyy Calls for Air Defense

Russian missile and drone strikes on Jan. 24 knocked out heating, electricity and water across Kyiv and killed one person, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said.

The strikes hit the capital's centralized district heating plants amid the coldest winter since the full-scale invasion, with temperatures dipping below -10C (14F), Oleksandr Kharchenko, director of the Energy Industry Research Center in Kyiv, said.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wrote on social media that "there must be no delays in supplying air defense" and said tripartite talks in the United Arab Emirates were constructive and could lead to further meetings next week, officials said.

Accounts differ on the scale of outages, with the BBC reporting almost 6,000 apartment blocks without heating, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko saying half of the city's apartment buildings lost heat, and Kyiv City State Administration reporting about 3,000 residential buildings still unheated, a discrepancy local officials did not reconcile.

City utility workers are repairing damage around the clock and officials have extended school closures into February while warning that decentralizing the grid and fully restoring heat could take months, city officials and aid groups said.