Reportage

Winter, the new weapon of the Russians against the Ukrainians

A Ukrainian soldier returning from the front line near Kherson, in southern Ukraine, Wednesday, November 23, 2022. AP - Bernat Armangue

Text by: Clea Broadhurst Follow

5 mins

It has been nine months since Russia invaded Ukraine.

Ukrainian soldiers recaptured the Kherson region after retreating from Moscow on November 11, marking Ukraine's biggest victory in the war so far and the third blow for Russia, after its troops withdrew from the north in April, then from Kharkiv in September.

According to the Ukrainian Air Force, Russia fired 70 missiles at the country, of which 51 were shot down.

The attack killed several people, notably in kyiv, the capital.

It also caused emergency power outages and interrupted water supplies in several cities, such as Lviv in the west of the country.

Advertising

Read more

From our special correspondent near Kramatorsk, in the Donbass

On Wednesday, November 23, Russia launched a new missile salvo on Ukraine.

As a result, much of the country suffered power and water cuts.

In a small hotel south of Kramatorsk, there has been neither since Wednesday afternoon.

And not everyone is lucky enough to have a generator handy.

It has become a precious object, impossible to buy now in the country.

It is by having a few minutes access to the internet that it gives a window - fast because the phones are unloading at full speed - on the scale of the attack yesterday, following which President Zelensky deplored a tragic result, while promising that the Ukrainians would overcome everything.

► To read also: 

And this resilience, we see it on the ground.

On Wednesday, the Kramatorsk hospital was plunged into darkness, while it is there that wounded soldiers are received on the Bakhmut front, in particular, where these soldiers have been fighting for months, with very little rest.

They are exhausted on Ukraine's busiest frontline.

No exception in this hospital, there is neither electricity nor water.

The staff lights up with a headlamp.

No doubt, the war is still very visible in the Donbass.

Electrical infrastructure increasingly targeted

The Russians make the winter actually become a weapon against the Ukrainians.

This can be seen in the suburbs of kyiv, in Butcha, a real theater of bombing at the very beginning of the war, a city gutted today.

People have lost everything, the distress can be read on their faces, and above all the uncertainty of the months to come when, under the snow, the temperatures are already negative.

Some are “lucky” to be able to live in a corner of their living room, warming themselves as best they can with a stove;

but for others, it's life in community, in prefabs where power and water cuts often occur.

Conditions impossible to live with.

► To read also: Ukraine: Russian strikes lead to massive water and electricity cuts

People are considering temporarily leaving the country, both to save energy for those who are forced to stay here, but also not to face whole days in the dark and cold, for a period of time. indeterminate.

Systematic and repeated Russian attacks on energy and heating infrastructure have led to regular blackouts in some of the country's largest cities for several weeks.

For the Ukrainians, Russia is trying to compensate for its losses on the battlefield.

They say here that Moscow is trying to “desertify” Ukraine, but it won't work, they say, they won't leave their country.

Moscow clings to its positions

In the military field, for weeks it seems that the Russian strategy is no longer to gain more territory but simply to cling to what it has.

She struggles to make new territorial advances.

Russian troops have withdrawn from key areas in the east and south, most recently from the city of Kherson.

A city liberated, but not quite safe yet.

Calls to leave Kherson, for example, are not only because winter is here, but also because the Ukrainians are giving back their fires to the Russians from the outskirts of the city.

Videos are circulating showing medics trying to help the frightened residents of Kherson under the bombs.

Today it has become a real battlefield, a new front line;

something the people of Kherson had never experienced before.

► To read also: Ukraine at the gates of winter: "I would like to say two words to Putin"

♦

The Ukrainian authorities have denounced " 

 ".

According to the testimonies, these are not deportations in the strict sense.

According to locals, those who left were not directly forced onto buses bound for Russia.

But undermining – Russian propaganda – convinced them that they had to flee to Russia.

Report by

our correspondent in Ukraine,

We've brainwashed people to the point that they've got the idea that the "Ukrainian Nazis" are coming to kill everyone...

Report: why and how did the residents of Kherson leave just before the liberation of the city?

RFI

Newsletter

Receive all the international news directly in your mailbox

I subscribe

Follow all the international news by downloading the RFI application

• Russia

• Ukraine

• our selection