Kyiv (Ukraine) (AFP) - Russia launched the “most powerful” attack so far this year on Ukraine’s battered energy facilities overnight, Kyiv said on Tuesday, leaving hundreds of thousands without heating in glacial temperatures ahead of talks to end the four-year war.

Russia’s strikes hit as temperatures dropped to their lowest since the start of the war in February 2022 and damaged an iconic Soviet-era WWII monument.

They came a day before Ukrainian and Russian negotiators were due to meet for a second round of talks in Abu Dhabi.

“Taking advantage of the coldest days of winter to terrorise people is more important to Russia than turning to diplomacy,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said, denouncing the attack.

He said Russia has “once again disregarded the efforts of the American side”.

NATO chief Mark Rutte, who visited Kyiv on Tuesday, said in an address to Ukraine’s parliament that “Russian attacks like those last night, do not signal seriousness about peace”.

An air alert warning of a possible Russian missile attack blared out across Kyiv during Rutte’s visit.

AFP journalists heard explosions across the capital overnight and residents in over 1,000 buildings woke to find their heating cut off as temperatures dipped towards -20C.

Some residents gathered around a damaged building, stepping over creaking debris and a thick layer of ice coating the ground.

“Our windows are broken and we have no heating,” Anastasia Grytsenko told AFP, “we don’t know what to do. Everyone is confused.”

Russia’s defence ministry confirmed it had launched “a massive strike” against “Ukrainian military-industrial complex enterprises and energy facilities”.

The Kremlin had last week said it agreed to a US request not to strike Kyiv for seven days, ending Sunday.

Ukraine had not reported large-scale Russian attacks on the capital last week, while denouncing continued attacks in other parts of the country.

“Several types of ballistic and cruise missiles, as well as drones, were used to strike high-rise buildings and thermal power plants,” Energy Minister Denys Shmygal said.

“Hundreds of thousands of families, including children, were deliberately left without heat in the harshest winter frosts,” he added.

Tuesday’s strike on Ukraine’s battered energy facilities was “the most powerful” since the start of 2026, the country’s largest private energy provider DTEK confirmed.

Ukraine’s air force said Russia had attacked with 71 missiles and 450 attack drones.

Six people were wounded in the capital, officials said, adding that thousands were without electricity.

- ‘Symbolic and cynical’ -

The base of the city’s towering Soviet-era Motherland statue was damaged.

“It is both symbolic and cynical: the aggressor state strikes at a place of remembrance of the struggle against aggression in the 20th century, repeating its crimes in the 21st century,” Culture Minister Tetyana Berezhna wrote on social media.

Russian strikes have this month repeatedly cut power and heating to tens of thousands of homes – with Kyiv and its European allies accusing Moscow of deliberately freezing Ukraine’s population.

Strikes also hit Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, temporarily cutting heating to some 100,000 subscribers.

The hours-long attack targeted energy infrastructure and aimed to “cause maximum destruction… and leave the city without heat during severe frost”, Kharkiv Governor Oleg Synegubov wrote on Telegram.

Authorities had to cut heating to more than 800 homes to prevent the wider network from freezing, he said, urging people to go to round-the-clock “invincibility points” around the city if they needed to warm up.

Overnight temperatures plunged to -19C in Kyiv and sank as low as -23C in Kharkiv.

- US pushes for deal -

Russian occupational authorities in southern Ukraine said that Ukrainian shelling had killed three people in the town of Nova Kakhovka.

Kremlin-installed authorities said the shelling hit a municipal building and a fruit shop.

“There are dead: three people, including an employee of the administration,” Vladimir Saldo, the Moscow-backed head of the Russian-controlled part of the Kherson region, said.

Nova Kakhovka fell to Russian forces in the first days of their 2022 invasion.

The United States has sought to craft a settlement between the two sides but the first round of trilateral talks held in Abu Dhabi last month failed to yield a breakthrough.

A second round is due to begin on Wednesday in the Emirati capital and is expected to focus on the crucial issue of territory.

Russia has demanded that Kyiv withdraw from the Donetsk region and has repeatedly said it is ready to seize the rest of eastern Ukraine by force if diplomacy fails.

Kyiv sees this as unacceptable.