Zelensky: Russia turns Ukraine's power grid into a "battlefield"

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky told Europeans Thursday that Russia was turning his country's power grid into a "battlefield" through attacks that are sending people fleeing to Europe.

"The Russian leadership gave the order to turn the energy grid into a battlefield. The consequences of that are very serious, once again, for all of us in Europe," Zelensky explained during an intervention before the Council of the European Union.

He added that "Russia is causing a new wave of migration of Ukrainians towards the European Union."

Measures were put in place to reduce energy consumption throughout Ukraine after Russian missile and drone strikes destroyed more than 30% of the country's power plants in a week.

Zelensky declared that the Russian bombing of Ukrainian energy facilities "aims to cause the largest number of electricity and heating problems for Ukraine in the fall and winter and to induce the largest number of Ukrainians to go to your countries."

In response, the Ukrainian president called on European countries to provide Kyiv's army with more advanced air defenses and to impose more economic sanctions on Moscow to limit its ability to finance the war.

He also stressed that the Ukrainian proposal to deploy an international monitoring mission on the Ukrainian-Belarus border "is becoming more important every day", after the Ukrainian army warned of the danger of an increasing Russian attack from Belarusian territory.

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