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Russia launched a Christmas Day attack on Ukraine’s energy system, leaving more than half a million consumers without heating, water and electricity.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the attack, the 13th major attack of 2024 on the country’s grid, was “deliberate” and not a coincidence. “What is more inhumane?” he wrote in X.

About 50 of the 70 missiles fired in the attack were intercepted, with a “significant” part of the more than 100 attack drones deployed, Zelenskyy added.

This year Ukrainians marked Christmas Day on December 25 for the second time, after switching to the western Gregorian calendar last year. The decision to stop celebrating Christmas on January 7 according to the Orthodox calendar was made in Kyiv to break Russian influence.

Oleh Syniehubov, governor of Ukraine’s eastern Kharkiv region, told Ukrainian national TV news that the attack left more than half a million consumers without heating, water and electricity.

Temperatures across Ukraine are freezing.

Heating supplies were also cut in some areas in Ukraine’s Ivano-Frankivsk and Dnipropetrovsk regions, in the west and south of the country.

Ukraine’s energy grid operator, Ukrenergo, urged consumers to limit consumption by not switching on too many appliances at once, adding that the system was still recovering from the previous outage. -attack on Russia on December 13.

Ukraine’s largest private energy company, DTEK, said its power stations were damaged and one of its longtime employees was killed.

Ukraine’s foreign minister, Andriy Sybiha, told X that the attack reflected Russian president Vladimir Putin’s response to “those talking about the illusory ‘Christmas Casefire’.”

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said last week that Zelenskyy rejected his proposal for a ceasefire and prisoner exchange on Orthodox Christmas, January 7.

Ukraine has denied that such a proposal is on the table, asking Hungary to “refrain from manipulations” regarding the war. On Friday, Heorhii Tykhyi, spokesman for the Foreign Ministry of Ukraine, described it as “PR, a step” by Orbán.