{"id":495619,"date":"2025-12-24T10:16:29","date_gmt":"2025-12-24T14:16:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/deultimominuto.net\/en\/uncategorized\/millions-of-ukrainians-spend-christmas-eve-without-electricity-due-to-russian-attacks\/"},"modified":"2025-12-24T10:16:29","modified_gmt":"2025-12-24T14:16:29","slug":"millions-of-ukrainians-spend-christmas-eve-without-electricity-due-to-russian-attacks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/deultimominuto.com\/en\/international\/millions-of-ukrainians-spend-christmas-eve-without-electricity-due-to-russian-attacks\/","title":{"rendered":"Millions of Ukrainians spend Christmas Eve without electricity due to Russian attacks"},"content":{"rendered":"Lviv (Ukraine).-<\/strong> Millions of Ukrainians will spend Christmas Eve<\/strong> without electricity and in sub-zero temperatures after another massive Russian attack against Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.\n\n“If there’s no electricity at home, we’ll have Christmas Eve dinner by candlelight,” said a passerby walking this Wednesday through the center of Leopolis, in western Ukraine, speaking loudly to be heard over the hum of portable generators that fill the streets.\n\nFollowing Tuesday’s Russian attacks, which employed 650 long-range drones and 38 missiles, three nuclear power plants were forced to reduce electricity production in response to damage to the grid, which also limited the ability to transfer the energy produced and imported to different parts of the country.\n\nConsequently, Le\u00f3polis was one of the cities that had to introduce drastic power cuts, with residents forced to spend up to ten hours a day without electricity and with planned interruptions introduced alternately by districts to divide the available electricity equitably among households.\n\n\n

Parties with Blackouts<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\nThis circumstance did not stop the preparations for one of the biggest festivities in the predominantly Christian country, and many residents of Leopolis were busy making traditional sweets and other dishes for Christmas Eve dinner, lighting themselves with battery-powered lamps.\n\nSeveral hundred visitors came to witness the installation of the traditional Ukrainian Christmas symbol, the ‘didukh’, in Angels Square, next to the Garrison Church, where the last farewell is given every day to soldiers fallen in the war.\n\nSeveral choirs, joined by native spectators and those from other cities, sang Christmas carols next to the ‘diduj’, a four-meter-high decorated sheaf of wheat.\n\n“With the children we are going to have a Christmas Eve dinner with 12 traditional dishes,” Lesia Kulchitska, a singer from the folk music group ‘Lemkovina’, told EFE.\n\n\n

You may be interested in: <\/strong>Santa Claus in the crosshairs of the Pentagon: 70 years tracking his sleigh due to an error<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n“It won’t be as abundant as before, because times are difficult for everyone and we have spent a lot of money supporting our army,” he admitted.\n\nKulchitska is very worried about her husband, Herman, who has been fighting as a volunteer since the beginning of the Russian invasion almost four years ago, but she believes that maintaining Christmas traditions, despite power outages, separation from loved ones and the losses suffered by many families, will only strengthen the determination of Ukrainians.\n\n\n

The blackouts and attacks against the railway network<\/strong> did not deter Natalia, a 54-year-old tourist who came from Vinnytsia to Lviv to fulfill her dream of spending Christmas in this city famous for its large number of churches.<\/p>\n\n\n“Christmas is about the hope that everything will soon get better. That there will be peace and all people will have health and joy and will be with God,” he told EFE.\n\nNatalia planned to attend masses in Leopolis before returning to her hometown, where power outages were expected to last this Wednesday for half the day.\n\n\n

The energy system, under attack<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\nAlthough the hum of the generators accompanied the sound of Christmas carols, the situation in Leopolis is better than that of many regions near the front or the border with Russia.\n\nThe effects of emergency repairs will take days or weeks to be felt, which means that many Ukrainians will spend up to 16 hours a day without electricity in the coming period, according to energy experts.\n\nRussian attacks against the energy system continued this Wednesday, when an energy plant in Kharkiv (northeast) suffered damage, as well as the gas infrastructure, crucial for heating homes in times of sub-zero temperatures.\n\n“Its main goal is to destroy the integrity of the energy system before New Year by dividing it along the Dnieper River and also isolating the regions of Odessa, Sumy, Chernihiv and Kharkiv,” wrote Volodymyr Omelchenko, energy expert at the Razumkov Center for Studies, in a comment on his social media.","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lviv (Ukraine).- Millions of Ukrainians will spend Christmas Eve without electricity and in sub-zero temperatures after another massive Russian attack against Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. “If there’s no electricity at home, we’ll have Christmas Eve dinner by candlelight,” said a passerby walking this Wednesday through the center of Leopolis, in western Ukraine, speaking loudly to be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":495620,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":""},"categories":[95],"tags":[42904,40414,40415],"class_list":["post-495619","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-international","tag-christmas-eve","tag-russia","tag-ukraine"],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/phj1q1-24VR","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/deultimominuto.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2025\/12\/Copia-de-Post-de-Instagram-Feliz-Cumpleanos-Sencillo-Minimalista-Azul-1000-x-500-px-2025-12-24T100028.881.jpg","dum_api":{"author_name":"EFE","author_image":"https:\/\/deultimominuto.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/1200px-EFE_logo.svg-96x96.png","categories_name":["International"],"featured_media_url":"https:\/\/cdn.deultimominuto.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2025\/12\/Copia-de-Post-de-Instagram-Feliz-Cumpleanos-Sencillo-Minimalista-Azul-1000-x-500-px-2025-12-24T100028.881.jpg"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deultimominuto.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/495619","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/deultimominuto.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/deultimominuto.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deultimominuto.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deultimominuto.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=495619"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/deultimominuto.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/495619\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deultimominuto.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/495620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deultimominuto.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=495619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deultimominuto.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=495619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deultimominuto.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=495619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}