Russia launched a combined drone and missile attack on Ukraine early today, knocking out power and heating supplies to thousands of apartment buildings in Kyiv amid freezing temperatures, Ukrainian officials said.
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said the Russian attacks cut heating supplies to 5,635 multi-storey residential apartment buildings.
One person was wounded, debris damaged a school building, and water supplies were disrupted on the left bank of the city of more than three million people, he said.
Regional officials said one person was killed in attacks in the wider Kyiv region and two petrol stations damaged.
It was the second major attack on the energy sector and other critical infrastructure in the Ukrainian capital so far this month as temperatures hover well below 0C.
"Thousands of houses are without heating in Kyiv at -15C outside, following Russia's mass strike overnight," Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said in a message posted on X.
"[Russian President Vladimir] Putin's barbaric strike this morning is a wake-up call to world leaders gathering in Davos: support for the Ukrainian people is urgent."
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Mr Sybiha reiterated the call for urgent additional energy assistance, air defence, and interceptors from Ukraine's allies.
As the war with Russia approaches its four-year mark, diplomatic efforts to find a way to end the conflict have yielded no tangible results so far despite pressure from US President Donald Trump on both Kyiv and Moscow.
Kyiv has already been suffering from severe power and heating outages following previous strikes on the city earlier this month, and dozens of repair crews have worked around the clock for more than a week to restore supplies to residents.
Mr Klitschko said that out of the buildings which were hit in the latest attack, 80% had already been struck in the previous attack.
Yaroslav Zhelezniak, a politician from the Holos party, said on the Telegram app that parliament's support office would work remotely today due to a lack of water and heating in the building. There were no parliamentary sessions scheduled today.
Russian strikes also damaged energy and other critical infrastructure in Vinnytsia, Dnipro, Odesa, Zaporizhzhia, Poltava and Sumy regions, Mr Sybiha said.
In the eastern Dnipropetrovsk region, a production facility was hit, and two people were wounded, officials said.
UN rights chief 'outraged' by Russian attacks on Ukraine's energy system
The UN rights chief said he was outraged by "cruel" Russian attacks on Ukraine's energy infrastructure which he said have cut off heating supplies to hundreds of thousands of families.
"Civilians are bearing the brunt of these attacks. They can only be described as cruel. They must stop. Targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure is a clear breach of the rules of warfare," Volker Turk said in a statement read out by a spokesperson at a Geneva press briefing.
Temperatures in parts of Ukraine have fallen below freezing and children and older people are among those most vulnerable, Mr Turk said.
The Kremlin says it only targets Ukrainian military facilities.
Mr Turk said Moscow has persisted in launching such large-scale strikes despite extensive and well-documented public information regarding their severe impact on the civilian population.
"I call on the Russian authorities to immediately cease these attacks. It is appalling to see civilians suffering in this way," added Mr Turk.
