KYIV: Kyiv residents huddled against bitter winter cold inside their unheated apartments on Saturday (Jan ‌10) as engineers struggled to restore power, water and heat knocked out in the latest salvo of Russian strikes.

Russia has regularly conducted intense bombardments of Ukraine's energy system since it invaded its neighbour in 2022. The war's fourth winter could be the coldest and darkest yet, with the accumulated damage to the grid bringing utilities to the brink, and temperatures already below minus 10 degrees Celsius and set to plunge further this week.

On Saturday, Kyiv's heat, power and water, hit hard by a strike two nights earlier, were shut down again as engineers tried to repair the ruined power grid.