Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Wednesday denounced an “inhumane” attack from Russia, which launched over 170 missiles and drones on his war-torn country’s power grid on Christmas Day, killing one and causing widespread blackouts.
The country woke up at 5:30 am (0330 GMT) to an air raid alarm, shortly followed by air force reports that Russia had launched Kalibr cruise missiles from the Black Sea.
“Putin deliberately chose Christmas to attack. What could be more inhumane? More than 70 missiles, including ballistic missiles, and more than a hundred attack drones. The target is our energy system,” Zelensky said.
This was the 13th large-scale strike on Ukraine’s energy system this year, the latest in Russia’s campaign targeting the power grid during winter. Ukraine said a Russian missile went through Moldovan and Romanian airspace, but Romania said it detected no such violation.
Ukraine’s air force shot down over 50 missiles, Zelensky said. “Unfortunately, there are some hits. As of now, there are blackouts in several regions,” he said.
Ukraine’s DTEK energy company said the attack severely damaged equipment of thermal power plants. “Denying light and warmth to millions of peace-loving people as they celebrate Christmas is a depraved and evil act that must be answered,” DTEK CEO Maxim Timchenko said, urging allies to send more air defence.
Engineers were working to repair the system, as regional officials reported power cuts. “Christmas morning has once again shown that nothing is sacred for the aggressor country,” said Svitlana Onyshchuk, the head of the Ivano-Frankivsk region. She said part of the region was without electricity “at a time when we celebrate one of the greatest religious holidays – the bright Christmas.”
Ukraine is officially celebrating Christmas on December 25 for a second year. The government last year changed the date from January 7, when most Orthodox believers celebrate, as a snub to Russia.
The Christmas Day attack targeted central Dnipropetrovsk, whose governor Sergiy Lysak said Russia was “trying to destroy the region’s power system”. The attacks killed at least one person in Dnipropetrovsk, Lysak said.
Rescue operations had been completed on the site of a strike on Kryvyi Rih, which killed one person and wounded 17 others the day before. Russia launched 12 missiles toward Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city near the Russian border, targeting the city’s boiler houses, thermal power plants and electricity facilities, mayor Igor Terekhov said. The attack wounded four in Kharkiv and cut heating to part of the city, he added.
Ukraine has been urging allies to send more aid to fend off aerial strikes and push back troops on the ground. “I am grateful to everyone who is working for the country, who is on combat duty, who is protecting our sky,” Zelensky said. “Russian evil will not break Ukraine and will not ruin Christmas,” Zelensky said.
How to spell Volodymyr Zelenskyy
CNN uses the single “y” spelling for “Zelensky,” while Fox and MSNBC go with a double “y” for “Zelenskyy.” The New York Times and The Washington Post are both single “y” organizations. The Associated Press is a double “y” outlet. Reuters goes in a completely different direction, spelling his last name “Zelenskiy.”
The issue is primarily one of transliteration – from the Cyrillic alphabet used in Ukraine to the Latin alphabet we use in America. There simply isn’t a clear and definitive way to render the Ukrainian President’s last name through our alphabet, which leads to the variety of spellings you see.
Zelensky himself has it spelled “Zelenskyy” on his passport. In May 2019 his administration said he preferred that spelling when his name was transliterated from the Cyrillic to the Latin alphabet.
In June of that year, Peter Dickinson, a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council, noted that in the early days of Zelensky’s time in office, his own administration had his name spelled differently on different official releases.
There is also some debate as to whether using the double “y” is an act of defiance against the Russians by Zelensky.
To understand that, consider how the capital of Ukraine is spelled. “Kyiv” is the transliteration in English of the Ukrainian spelling of the nation’s capital. “Kiev” is based on the Russian spelling of the city’s name.
“Kyiv means that you transliterate into English from the original Ukrainian name of the Ukrainian capital. By doing so you recognize the fact that it is Ukrainian. By not doing so you question the fact that it is a Ukrainian city,” Dr. Yuri Shevchuk, a member of the department of Slavic languages at Columbia University, told The Forward earlier this month.
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/03/17/politics/how-to-spell-volodymyr-zelenskyy/index.html
Also known as: Volodymyr Zelenskiy, Volodymyr Zelenskyy
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Volodymyr-Zelensky
Name romanization does this for lots of names like Mao Zedong and Mao Tse-tung, Sukarno and Soekarno.
Transliteration is always a mess. Specially when it’s the romanisation of vowels and semivowels - as Latin used the same ⟨V⟩ for /w ʊ u:/, and ⟨I⟩ for /j ɪ i:/, but then a lot of languages using the Latin alphabet solved the issue in different ways.
There is also some debate as to whether using the double “y” is an act of defiance against the Russians by Zelensky.
I’d say that it’s less about defiance and more about highlighting Ukrainian identity.
The trick here is that you can transliterate ⟨-ий⟩ as ⟨-yy⟩, but only if it’s from Ukrainian. In Russian that ⟨и⟩ is typically transliterated as ⟨i⟩, so you’d end with ⟨-iy⟩.
Additionally it seems customary to clip some East Slavic names using ⟨-ий⟩ to be transliterated by just ⟨-y⟩; you see this for example for Trotsky (Троцкий).
[In the meantime the scientific transliteration - prescribing ⟨j⟩ - cries in a corner.]
His last name has two Y’s. Zelenskyy. I don’t know why there are so many articles dropping that second Y now, but I’ve seen a bunch of them on Lemmy in the past few weeks.
