KYIV - An overnight Russian bombardment on Kyiv left thousands of residential buildings and Parliament without heating and water in -14 deg C temperatures on Jan 20, just as the Ukrainian capital was scrambling to restore vital utilities destroyed in earlier attacks.

The barrage of hundreds of drones and missiles, which targeted energy facilities across Ukraine, killed at least one 50-year-old man near Kyiv.

More than half a million people have evacuated

from the capital in January, when Russia unleashed its strongest attack on the capital’s energy infrastructure in the war, the city’s mayor, Mr Vitali Klitschko, told AFP.

AFP journalists in the capital heard air raid sirens and explosions as Ukrainian air defence systems responded to the drones and missiles.

Sheltering in a metro station in the centre of Kyiv, Ms Marina Sergienko, a 51-year-old accountant, said she thought the repeated Russian strikes, which have left millions in the cold and dark over recent weeks, had a clear purpose.

“To wear down the people, push things to some critical point so there’s no strength left, to break our resistance,” she told AFP, taking cover alongside dozens of other Kyiv residents bundled in hats and coats.

Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiga lashed out at Russian President Vladimir Putin, saying: “War criminal Putin continues to wage a genocidal war against women, children and elderly.”

He said Russian forces had targeted energy infrastructure overnight in at least seven regions, and urged Ukraine’s allies to bolster its air defence systems.

President Volodymyr Zelensky suggested he would skip the ongoing World Economic Forum in Switzerland to deal with the aftermath of the strike.

But he kept o...