Russia launched another vast attack on Ukraine’s energy system, rocking Kyiv with explosions overnight and into Saturday morning, leaving 1.2 million properties without power countrywide during sub-zero winter cold.
Deputy Prime Minister Oleksiy Kuleba said more than 3,200 buildings in the capital remained without heating in the late evening, down from 6,000 in the morning. Night-time temperatures were hovering around -10 degrees Celsius .
More than 160 emergency crews were operating in the capital to restore heating, he said. Crews were also at work in other affected areas, mainly in western and southern Ukraine.
Energy Minister Denys Shmyhal, writing on Telegram after the daily meeting of officials devoted to energy, said more than 800,000 Kyiv households were still without power as were a further 400,000 in Chernihiv region, north of the capital.
“As for power, constant enemy attacks unfortunately keep the situation from being stabilized,” he wrote.
Many residents’ apartments were already freezing cold from disruption to Kyiv’s centralized heat distribution system following previous attacks.
Moscow carried out the strikes as
trilateral, US-brokered talks between Russia and Ukraine
continued into a second day in the United Arab Emirates, later adjourning with no sign of compromise. More talks were due to take place next weekend.
Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said Russia targeted the capital and four regions in the country’s north and east.
“We are quickly restoring damaged power generation facilities, increasing imports as much as possible, and introducing new alternative capacity,” she said.
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said one person was killed in the capital city and four were injured, three of them requiring hospitalization, while over 30 people including a child were injured in Ukraine’s second city, Kharkiv.
Klitschko visited Kyiv’s worst-affected district, the northeastern suburb of Troyeshchyna, where 600 buildings were without power, water and heat.
He said vulnerable residents were being given hot food and medicine, and that the city was rolling out extra, heated shelters which would be operating around the clock in the area.
Kyiv recently loosened its wartime military curfew to allow people in freezing apartments to go to heated tents or public buildings at night.
Russia, which has pummelled Ukraine’s power grid since November 2022, nine months into its full-scale invasion, is conducting its heaviest bombardment campaign on energy facilities this winter. People across Ukraine have been left with only a few hours of electricity a day, some without heat or water. Ukraine’s air force said Russia had unleashed 375 drones and 21 missiles, including two of its rarely deployed Tsirkon ballistic missiles, in its overnight attack.
The sky over Kyiv was lit up by regular orange flashes as air defenses fired on missiles and drones descending on the capital. Loud booms echoed around the city’s tall buildings.
Tymur Tkachenko, head of Kyiv’s military administration, reported strikes in at least four districts. A medical facility was among the buildings damaged.
Before Saturday, Kyiv had already endured two mass overnight attacks since the New Year that have knocked out power and heating to hundreds of residential buildings. Emergency workers were still engaged in restoring services to residents that had been knocked out by those attacks, and Klitschko said many of the buildings that had lost heating on Saturday had only recently had it restored. In Kharkiv, a frequent target 30 km from the Russian border and much closer to eastern battlefronts, Mayor Ihor Terekhov said 25 drones had hit several districts. Writing on Telegram, Terekhov said the drones had struck a dormitory for displaced people and two medical facilities, including a maternity hospital.
Russian air attack knocks out power for over a million Ukrainians
https://arab.news/jvdyy
Russian air attack knocks out power for over a million Ukrainians
- Heating restored to many buildings but over 3,000 lack heat
- Energy minister says over 8,000 Kyiv households without power
Greenland crisis boosts Danish apps designed to identify and help boycott US goods
- Boycott campaigns are usually short-lived and real change often requires an organized effort rather than individual consumers
COPENHAGEN: The makers of mobile apps designed to help shoppers identify and boycott American goods say they saw a surge of interest in Denmark and beyond after the recent flare-up in tensions over US President Donald Trump’s designs on Greenland.
The creator of the “Made O’Meter” app, Ian Rosenfeldt, said he saw around 30,000 downloads of the free app in just three days at the height of the trans-Atlantic diplomatic crisis in late January out of more than 100,000 since it was launched in March.
Apps offer practical help
Rosenfeldt, who lives in Copenhagen and works in digital marketing, decided to create the app a year ago after joining a Facebook group of like-minded Danes hoping to boycott US goods.
“Many people were frustrated and thinking, ‘How do we actually do this in practical terms,’” the 53-year-old recalled. “If you use a bar code scanner, it’s difficult to see if a product is actually American or not, if it’s Danish or not. And if you don’t know that, you can’t really make a conscious choice.”
The latest version of “Made O’Meter” uses artificial intelligence to identify and analyze several products at a time, then recommend similar European-made alternatives. Users can set preferences, like “No USA-owned brands” or “Only EU-based brands.” The app claims over 95 percent accuracy.
“By using artificial intelligence, you can take an image of a product … and it can make a deep dive to go out and find the correct information about the product in many levels,” Rosenfeldt told The Associated Press during a demonstration at a Copenhagen grocery store. “This way, you have information that you can use to take decisions on what you think is right.”
‘Losing an ally’
After an initial surge of downloads when the app was launched, usage tailed off. Until last month, when Trump stepped up his rhetoric about the need for the US to acquire Greenland, a strategically important and mineral-rich Arctic island that is a semiautonomous territory of Denmark.
Usage peaked Jan. 23, when there were almost 40,000 scans in one day, compared with 500 or so daily last summer. It has dropped back since but there were still around 5,000 a day this week, said Rosenfeldt, who noted “Made O’Meter” is used by over 20,000 people in Denmark but also by people in Germany, Spain, Italy, even Venezuela.
“It’s become much more personal,” said Rosenfeldt, who spoke of “losing an ally and a friend.”
Trump announced in January he would slap new tariffs on Denmark and seven other European countries that opposed his takeover calls, only to abruptly drop his threats after he said a “framework” for a deal over access to mineral-rich Greenland was reached with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte’s help. Few details of that agreement have emerged.
The US began technical talks in late January to put together an Arctic security deal with Denmark and Greenland, which say sovereignty is not negotiable.
Rosenfeldt knows such boycotts won’t damage the US economy, but hopes to send a message to supermarkets and encourage greater reliance on European producers.
“Maybe we can send a signal and people will listen and we can make a change,” he added.
The protest may be largely symbolic
Another Danish app, “NonUSA,” topped 100,000 downloads at the beginning of February. One of its creators, 21-year-old Jonas Pipper, said there were over 25,000 downloads Jan. 21, when 526 product scans were performed in a minute at one point. Of the users, some 46,000 are in Denmark and around 10,000 in Germany.
“We noticed some users saying they felt like a little bit of the pressure was lifted off them,” Pipper said. “They feel like they kind of gained the power back in this situation.”
It’s questionable whether such apps will have much practical effect.
Christina Gravert, an associate professor of economics at the University of Copenhagen, said there are actually few US products on Danish grocery store shelves, “around 1 to 3 percent”. Nuts, wines and candy, for example. But there is widespread use of American technology in Denmark, from Apple iPhones to Microsoft Office tools.
“If you really want to have an impact, that’s where you should start,” she said.
Even “Made O’Meter” and “NonUSA” are downloaded from Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play Store.
Gravert, who specializes in behavioral economics, said such boycott campaigns are usually short-lived and real change often requires an organized effort rather than individual consumers.
“It can be interesting for big supermarket brands to say, OK, we’re not going to carry these products anymore because consumers don’t want to buy them,” she said. “If you think about large companies, this might have some type of impact on the import (they) do.”
On a recent morning, shoppers leaving one Copenhagen grocery store were divided.
“We do boycott, but we don’t know all the American goods. So, it’s mostly the well-known trademarks,” said Morten Nielsen, 68, a retired navy officer. “It’s a personal feeling … we feel we do something, I know we are not doing very much.”
“I love America, I love traveling in America,” said 63-year-old retiree Charlotte Fuglsang. “I don’t think we should protest that way.”
