Russia attempts to keep Ukraine's lights out and heat off as the cold sets in

Airstrikes have destroyed almost a third of Ukraine's power stations in a little over a week, Ukrainian officials say, as Russia attempts to put the country in the cold and dark with winter rapidly approaching — a tactic Western observers say is meant to demoralize ordinary people.

"Ukraine is under fire by the [Russian] occupiers. They continue to do what they do best — terrorize and kill civilians," President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wrote on the Telegram messaging app.

He said Russian airstrikes had destroyed 30 per cent of Ukraine's power stations since Oct. 10 and that Moscow would be held to account for its actions.

Missiles struck power generating facilities in a clutch of Ukrainian cities home to millions of people, and several people were killed. Moscow acknowledged targeting energy plants, while Ukraine said water infrastructure had also been hit.

"The situation is critical now across the country ... the whole country needs to prepare for electricity, water and heating outages," Kyrylo Tymoshenko, deputy head of the Ukrainian president's office, told Ukrainian television.

Even far from front lines, basic utilities are no longer certainties, with daily strikes reaching far into the country and damaging key facilities, sometimes faster than they can be repaired.

The latest city to lose power and water entirely was Zhytomyr, home to military bases, industries, leafy boulevards and about 250,000 people some 140 kilometres west of Kyiv.

The city's hospitals switched to backup power after a double missile strike Tuesday on an energy facility, and other settlements in the area also lost electricity, city and regional officials said.

Repairs quickly reconnected some homes but 150,000 people were still without electricity hours after the morning strike, regional authorities said.

In Kyiv, the capital, missile strikes damaged two power facilities and killed two people, city authorities said. The attack left 50,000 people without power, the facilities' operator said.

Missiles also severely damaged an energy facility in the south-central city of Dnipro.

'Straight out of the Russian playbook'

Depriving people of water, electricity and heating as winter begins to bite and the broadening use of so-called suicide drones that nosedive into targets have opened a new phase in Russian President Vladimir Putin's war. 

"That is straight out of the Russian playbook," Canadian global affairs analyst Michael Bociurkiw told CBC News. "Mr. Putin knows very well how to manipulate not only the egos of Western leaders, but also the fears of Western voters."

The attacks serve two purposes, he explained.

"No. 1, to make it hard on Ukrainians," he told CBC's The Sunday Magazine from the Ukrainian port city of Odesa. "I think it was one Russian journalist who said, 'We should bomb them into the Dark Ages.' But then the other [purpose] is to make it more difficult for European consumers, not only driving up energy prices, but depriving them of energy in some cases."

He said it will be important for both Ukrainian and other European leaders to convince their people to "stick with this war effort, even if it means temporarily shifting into a war economy," because it's better to try to deal with Putin on their terms than his.

As for Ukrainians, Bociurkiw has no doubts they'll remain resilient.

"I think the fears that they had at the beginning [of the invasion] has been replaced with this anger that they want to fight all the way, and I think all the way means also regaining territory taken in 2014," he said.

Cruel and pointless 

Russia earlier this month named Gen. Sergei Surovikin as overall commander of Moscow's forces in Ukraine. Surovikin served in Syria and Chechnya, where Russian forces pounded cities to rubble in a brutal but effective scorched earth policy against foes.

Nicknamed "General Armageddon" by the Russian media because of his alleged toughness, his appointment was followed by the biggest wave of missile strikes against Ukraine since Moscow invaded on Feb. 24.

Putin cast those strikes as revenge for what he said was a Ukrainian attack on the bridge that links Russia to Crimea — the peninsula Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014. At least three people were killed in the bombing for which Ukraine has not officially taken responsibility.

British Armed Forces Minister James Heappey told BBC Radio that Surovikin was pursuing a cruel and pointless strategy.

"The new general commanding the Russian operation is wasting some of his most potent and valuable weapon systems against civilian targets hundreds of miles away from ... the front line," said Heappey.

"He is doing so to cause terror to try and break the will of the Ukrainian people. I can promise him that that will definitely not be achieved."

Russia has denied deliberately targeting civilians although it has repeatedly struck heavily populated cities across the country. It says it has been targeting military and energy infrastructure.

'It's really cold' 

For the average Ukrainian, it's already a struggle to keep warm in buildings with no power and, often, no windows, which have been blown out during Russian attacks. The weather forecast for the coming week in Ukraine has temperatures close to zero at night.

As the freeze sets in, those who haven't fled from the heavy fighting, regular shelling and months of Russian occupation in eastern Ukraine are desperately trying to figure out how to dig in for the cold months. Homes have become like rudimentary shelters from a medieval age where residents live by candlelight, gather water from wells and bundle up to fend off the cold.

Nine-year-old Artem Panchenko recently helped his grandmother stoke a smoky fire in a makeshift outdoor kitchen beside their nearly abandoned apartment block. 

They've been living without gas, water or electricity for around three weeks, ever since Russian missile strikes cut off the utilities in their town in Ukraine's eastern Kharkiv region. For them and the few other residents that remain in the complex in Kivsharivka, bundling up at night and cooking outdoors is the only way to survive.

"It's cold and there are bombings," Artem said Sunday as he helped his grandmother with the cooking. "It's really cold. I'm sleeping in my clothes in our apartment."

In the nearby village of Kurylivka, Viktor Palyanitsa, 37, said he's gathered enough wood to last the entire winter. Still, he planned to begin sleeping beside a wood-burning stove in a rickety outbuilding and not his home, since all the windows in his house have been blown out by flying shrapnel.

"It's not comfortable. We spend a lot of time on gathering wood. You can see the situation we're living in," Palyanitsa said, quietly understating the dire outlook for the next several months.

Authorities are working to gradually restore electricity, but there was no timeline for when utilities will be restored and authorities are providing firewood to residents. 

Anton Sevrukov, 47, toasted bread and heated a kettle of water over a fire to bring up tea to his disabled mother.

"No electricity, no water, no gas. We are cold," he said. "I'm making tea for my mother on the fire but she only drinks a little bit to warm up for a short time."

In the darkness of his cramped, musty apartment, Sevrukov's mother sat under a blanket on a sofa piled with plates of spoiled food. Zoya Sevrukova said she'd been bedridden for seven years, and that she spends most of her time seated, playing solitaire with a worn pack of cards.

"It's really cold now. If it weren't for my son, I would freeze," she said.