Ukraine faces 'toughest winter' since Russia's full-scale invasion, UN official tells BBC

Former Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo told the BBC that the coming winter could be the toughest Ukraine has endured since Russia’s full‑scale invasion began. “This wintertime is going to beryllium the toughest 1 since the war,” De Croo said. He explained that Ukraine entered the season “from a precise anemic basal going into this winter” and noted that the UN is “very, precise worried… astir what this wintertime could become.” The concern stems from what De Croo described as Russia’s “very systematic” targeting of civilian and energy infrastructure. “This is petrol stations, it’s buying malls, it’s concern centres, but it’s particularly vigor infrastructure, vigor transmission lines, and truthful on. There is perfectly nary justification for that,” he said. De Croo warned that such attacks could produce a “worst‑case scenario” in which civilians struggle to access energy for heating, while water and sewage systems cease to function. “With the temperatures that you would get present that would pb to circumstances which would beryllium truly adjacent to humanitarian catastrophe,” De Croo added. Winter temperatures in Ukraine can fall to as low as ‑20 °C. If power supplies and critical infrastructure suffer severe damage, the situation could lead to “quite immoderate quality suffering,” according to De Croo. To prepare Ukraine for winter, the United Nations Development Programme is repairing parts of the country’s energy strategy that were damaged during the previous winter and is establishing additional sustainable, decentralised energy plants that are less vulnerable to attack. De Croo characterised the repair work as “almost an intolerable task.” “They are reconstructing these sites nether constant, changeless aerial alarms. And they cognize that they are moving astatine a tract which is simply a target,” he said. “So you effort to reconstruct, but portion of your time you can't enactment due to the fact that it's conscionable excessively dangerous.”