CHASIV YAR, Ukraine: A Russian missile struck an apartment building in eastern Ukraine Sunday, killing at least 15 people as Moscow’s forces sought to consolidate their control over the Donbas region.
“During the rescue operation, 15 bodies were found at the scene and five people were pulled out of the rubble” alive in the town of Chasiv Yar, the local emergency service said on Facebook.
“At least 30 others are under the rubble” of the four-story building after it was hit by a Russian Uragan missile, Donetsk regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said earlier on Telegram.
The building was partially destroyed in the strike, AFP correspondents saw at the scene where dozens of rescuers were sifting through the rubble with a mechanical digger.
Rescuers had so far been able to establish contact with three people under the rubble, emergency services said.
Having fought long battles to capture the last areas of the neighboring region of Lugansk, Russian troops are now turning their focus to Donetsk as they look to take control of the whole Donbas region.
One Chasiv Yar resident, who did not give her name, showed AFP journalists around the wreckage of her apartment.
“Yesterday, 11 or 10 o’clock in the evening, I was in the bedroom, and when I was leaving, everything started thundering and cracking...,” she said.
“The only thing that saved me was when I ran here, because immediately afterwards all of this crashed down.”
Another woman who had ventured inside to see what she could salvage from her apartment retrieved a blue bird, still perched in its cage.
Looking down from her balcony, where her pet had escaped the blast, she lifted up the cage with a brief, triumphant flourish.
Hours earlier, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had condemned what he said was Russia’s deliberate shelling of civilian targets.
The Donetsk region was under persistent shelling, while Russian ground attacks were all but paused, the Ukrainian army general staff said Sunday.
Ukraine’s forces had hit a Russian base in the occupied southern region of Kherson, they added, without elaborating.
On Saturday, three people were killed and 23 wounded by shelling in Donetsk, governor Kyrylenko said.
Strikes were also reported in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second city in the northeast, where a “teaching establishment” and a house were hit, wounding one, according to regional governor Oleg Sinegubov.
Zelensky condemned the widespread Russian bombardments in an address Saturday night.
“In just one day, Russia hit Mykolaiv, Kharkiv, Kryvyi Rih, the communities of the Zaporizhzhia region,” Zelensky said.
Russian strikes “absolutely deliberately” and “purposefully” targeted the residential sector, hitting “ordinary houses, civilian objects, people,” he said.
“Such terrorist actions can really only be stopped with weapons, modern and powerful,” Zelensky added, thanking the United States for its latest military aid package.
Washington has signed off on a $400-million package, including four additional High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems to add to eight already in place and high-precision artillery ammunition not previously sent to Ukraine.
“It’s a further evolution in our support for Ukraine in this battle in the Donbas,” a senior defense official was quoted by the US Department of Defense as saying.
On Sunday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Russia’s restriction on Ukrainian grain exports may have contributed to turmoil in Sri Lanka triggered by severe shortages of food and fuel.
“We’re seeing the impact of this Russian aggression playing out everywhere,” Blinken told reporters in Bangkok.
Renewing a demand that he has made repeatedly, Blinken called on Russia to let an estimated 20 million tons of grain leave Ukraine, which Moscow invaded in February.
Russian officials in the eastern Ukrainian region of Kharkiv meanwhile announced the start of the harvest “in the liberated territories of the region,” Russian news agency RIA Novosti announced Sunday.
Ukraine has repeatedly accused Russia of having stolen its wheat harvest in the occupied eastern regions, to illegally sell it on the international market.
Russia continued its crackdown on news coverage critical of its conduct in the war, blocking the website of the German daily Die Welt Sunday, the latest in a growing list.
Since the start of the Russian military operation in Ukraine, the German newspaper has published content in Russian.
Canada agreed Saturday to deliver to Germany turbines needed to maintain the Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline, despite sanctions in place against Russia and appeals from Ukraine.
The turbines were undergoing maintenance at a Canadian site owned by German industrial giant Siemens, and Gazprom blamed its absence for cuts to deliveries via the pipeline, raising fears of a gas shortage in Germany.
Canada also announced on Saturday its intention to extend economic sanctions against Russia to industrial manufacturing.
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Russian shelling in east Ukraine kills at least 15
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Russian shelling in east Ukraine kills at least 15
- About three dozen people could be trapped in the rubble, says Ukraine official
Ukraine businesses struggle to cope as Russian attacks bring power cuts and uncertainty
KYIV: It is pre-dawn in the historic Podil district of the Ukraine capital, Kyiv, and warm light from the Spelta bakery-bistro’s window pierces the darkness outside. On a wooden surface dusted with flour, the baker Oleksandr Kutsenko skilfully divides and shapes soft, damp pieces of dough. As he shoves the first loaves into the oven, a sweet, delicate aroma of fresh bread fills the space.
Seconds later the lights go out, the ovens switch off and darkness envelops the room. Kutsenko, 31, steps outside into the freezing night, switches on a large rectangular generator and the power kicks back in. It’s a pattern that will be repeated many times as the business struggles to keep working through the power outages caused by Russia’s bombing campaign on Ukraine’s energy grid.
“It’s now more than impossible to imagine a Ukrainian business operating without a generator,” said Olha Hrynchuk, the co-founder and head baker of Spelta.
The cost of purchasing and operating generators to overcome power outages is just one of many challenges facing Ukrainian businesses after nearly four years of war. Acute labor shortages due to mobilization and war-related migration, security risks, declining purchasing power and complicated logistics add to the pressure, officials say.
Hrynchuk, 28, opened the bakery 10 months after Russia launched its full-scale invasion in 2022. That winter was the first year Russia targeted Ukraine’s energy system. Hrynchuk says they barely know what it is to work under “normal” conditions, but have never faced the challenges they do now.
Production is entirely dependent on electricity and the generator burns about 700 hryvnias ($16) worth of fuel per hour.
“We run on a generator for 10 to 12 hours a day. You have no fixed schedule — you have to adapt and refuel it at the same time,” Hrynchuk said.
‘Operate at a loss’
Olha Nasonova, 52, who is head of the Restaurants of Ukraine analytical center, says the industry is experiencing its most difficult period of the past 20 years.
While businesses were prepared for electricity cuts, no one expected such a cold winter and it’s been especially tough for small cafés and family-run establishments, because they have the least financial resources.
The “Best Way to Cup” project, which has two venues and roasts and grinds its own coffee, is on the brink of permanent closure. Co-founder Yana Bilym, 33, who opened the cafe in May, said a Russian attack shattered all its windows and glass doors in August. Bilym said the cost of renovation was 150,000 hryvnias (about $3,400), half of which she financed with a bank loan that she only recently finished repaying.
Last month, after several consecutive large-scale Russian attacks on the energy sector, her entire building lost its water supply, and soon after the sewer system stopped working.
“We were forced to close. We believe it’s temporary. Businesses in December and January, unfortunately, operate at a loss,” Bilym said.
Now she has to regularly check the coffee machine and the specialty refrigerators, which she fears may not withstand the cold. Bilym hopes the closure is short-term. Her husband volunteered to serve in the military on the front line and she wants him to have somewhere to come back to when he returns to civilian life.
Generators are expensive to run
Many businesses have become a lifeline for communities struggling with plunging temperatures. Ukraine’s government has allowed some firms to operate during curfew hours in the energy emergency as “Points of Invincibility,” allowing access to free electricity to charge phones and power banks, drink tea and have some respite from the cold.
Tetiana Abramova, 61, is a founder of the Rito Group, a clothing company that has been producing designer knitwear for men and women since 1991, the year Ukraine became independent.
It participates in Ukraine Fashion Week, the country’s biggest fashion show, and exports garments to the United States. Abramova took out a loan in 2022 to purchase a powerful 35-kilowatt generator costing 500,000 hryvnias ($11,500) to keep the business running during blackouts and a wood-fired boiler for heating.
“At work we have heat, we have water, we have light — and we have each other,” she said.
But it’s not easy. Operating on generators is 15 percent–20 percent more expensive than using regular electricity. As a result, production costs are currently about 15 percent higher than normal. Added to that, customer numbers have dropped by about 40 percent as many people have left the country, so the focus is now on attracting new clients through online sales.
“Profitability has fallen by around 50 percent, partly due to power outages,” she said. “This affects both the volume and efficiency of our work. We simply cannot operate as much as we used to.”
‘Main goal is to survive’
A macroeconomic forecast by the Kyiv School of Economics for the first quarter of 2026 says strikes on the energy system are currently the most acute short-term risk to the country’s GDP. The analysis says if business manages to adapt, output losses could be limited to around 1 percent or 2 percent of GDP. But if the energy system failures are prolonged it could lead to larger losses, of as much as 2 percent or 3 percent of GDP.
Abramova, an entrepreneur with more than 30 years of experience, says she spent nearly 100,000 hryvnias ($2,300) over two months on generator servicing to maintain production. But she cannot pass all those costs on to retailers.
“For us now, the main goal is not to be the most efficient, but to survive,” Abramova said.
Seconds later the lights go out, the ovens switch off and darkness envelops the room. Kutsenko, 31, steps outside into the freezing night, switches on a large rectangular generator and the power kicks back in. It’s a pattern that will be repeated many times as the business struggles to keep working through the power outages caused by Russia’s bombing campaign on Ukraine’s energy grid.
“It’s now more than impossible to imagine a Ukrainian business operating without a generator,” said Olha Hrynchuk, the co-founder and head baker of Spelta.
The cost of purchasing and operating generators to overcome power outages is just one of many challenges facing Ukrainian businesses after nearly four years of war. Acute labor shortages due to mobilization and war-related migration, security risks, declining purchasing power and complicated logistics add to the pressure, officials say.
Hrynchuk, 28, opened the bakery 10 months after Russia launched its full-scale invasion in 2022. That winter was the first year Russia targeted Ukraine’s energy system. Hrynchuk says they barely know what it is to work under “normal” conditions, but have never faced the challenges they do now.
Production is entirely dependent on electricity and the generator burns about 700 hryvnias ($16) worth of fuel per hour.
“We run on a generator for 10 to 12 hours a day. You have no fixed schedule — you have to adapt and refuel it at the same time,” Hrynchuk said.
‘Operate at a loss’
Olha Nasonova, 52, who is head of the Restaurants of Ukraine analytical center, says the industry is experiencing its most difficult period of the past 20 years.
While businesses were prepared for electricity cuts, no one expected such a cold winter and it’s been especially tough for small cafés and family-run establishments, because they have the least financial resources.
The “Best Way to Cup” project, which has two venues and roasts and grinds its own coffee, is on the brink of permanent closure. Co-founder Yana Bilym, 33, who opened the cafe in May, said a Russian attack shattered all its windows and glass doors in August. Bilym said the cost of renovation was 150,000 hryvnias (about $3,400), half of which she financed with a bank loan that she only recently finished repaying.
Last month, after several consecutive large-scale Russian attacks on the energy sector, her entire building lost its water supply, and soon after the sewer system stopped working.
“We were forced to close. We believe it’s temporary. Businesses in December and January, unfortunately, operate at a loss,” Bilym said.
Now she has to regularly check the coffee machine and the specialty refrigerators, which she fears may not withstand the cold. Bilym hopes the closure is short-term. Her husband volunteered to serve in the military on the front line and she wants him to have somewhere to come back to when he returns to civilian life.
Generators are expensive to run
Many businesses have become a lifeline for communities struggling with plunging temperatures. Ukraine’s government has allowed some firms to operate during curfew hours in the energy emergency as “Points of Invincibility,” allowing access to free electricity to charge phones and power banks, drink tea and have some respite from the cold.
Tetiana Abramova, 61, is a founder of the Rito Group, a clothing company that has been producing designer knitwear for men and women since 1991, the year Ukraine became independent.
It participates in Ukraine Fashion Week, the country’s biggest fashion show, and exports garments to the United States. Abramova took out a loan in 2022 to purchase a powerful 35-kilowatt generator costing 500,000 hryvnias ($11,500) to keep the business running during blackouts and a wood-fired boiler for heating.
“At work we have heat, we have water, we have light — and we have each other,” she said.
But it’s not easy. Operating on generators is 15 percent–20 percent more expensive than using regular electricity. As a result, production costs are currently about 15 percent higher than normal. Added to that, customer numbers have dropped by about 40 percent as many people have left the country, so the focus is now on attracting new clients through online sales.
“Profitability has fallen by around 50 percent, partly due to power outages,” she said. “This affects both the volume and efficiency of our work. We simply cannot operate as much as we used to.”
‘Main goal is to survive’
A macroeconomic forecast by the Kyiv School of Economics for the first quarter of 2026 says strikes on the energy system are currently the most acute short-term risk to the country’s GDP. The analysis says if business manages to adapt, output losses could be limited to around 1 percent or 2 percent of GDP. But if the energy system failures are prolonged it could lead to larger losses, of as much as 2 percent or 3 percent of GDP.
Abramova, an entrepreneur with more than 30 years of experience, says she spent nearly 100,000 hryvnias ($2,300) over two months on generator servicing to maintain production. But she cannot pass all those costs on to retailers.
“For us now, the main goal is not to be the most efficient, but to survive,” Abramova said.
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