Frosty greetings, but no love greetings, ex-ambassador Melnyk sends the German Chancellor from Kyiv. It’s about snowfall, about frosty temperatures. Melnyk explains what blackouts mean for Ukrainians – and what Putin’s strategy looks like for the Ukrainians before the first full winter of war.
In order to underline the seriousness of the situation for Ukrainians in view of the snowfall in Kyiv and Russian missile offensives, ex-ambassador Andriy Melnyk sends frosty greetings from Kyiv. The politician, who now works in the Foreign Ministry of Ukraine, addresses this directly to Chancellor Olaf Scholz. “Morning Mr. @Bundeskanzler from Kyiv,” he tweeted with a selfie showing him in front of a snow-covered park bench. “It’s minus 5 degrees.” Every fourth of his compatriots, 10 million Ukrainians, remained without electricity and water. “Don’t you want to give Mr. Putin an ultimatum to stop his rocket terror? Or wait until it’s too late and everyone freezes to death?”
The Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyj recently described the devastating supply situation. “At the moment, more than ten million Ukrainians are without electricity,” he said in his daily video message. He described the regions of Odessa, Kyiv, Vinnytsia and Sumy as particularly affected by power cuts.
While the effects of the Russian war of aggression in Europe mean horrendous price increases, for example for gas, it has brought the Ukrainians numerous supply blackouts for weeks. Because the Russians had attacked civilian targets such as substations.
Melnyk explains the Russian strategy he believes is behind it with a comparison in another tweet. “People in Germany are still afraid, above all, of a nuclear attack by Russia,” he writes. “But the fact that Putin is systematically, almost unnoticed, cynically destroying Ukraine’s nervous system – our energy infrastructure – with rockets on a daily basis deserves little attention
He shares a post from his country’s Ministry of Defense showing surgeons in a cardiology clinic operating during a blackout.