Zelenskiy praises Ukrainians for battles with Russia and the weather

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Sunday thanked Ukraine's military for fighting Russian attacks and its rescue services for tackling the consequences of extreme winter weather that he said had deprived about 400 settlements in 10 regions of power. In his nightly video address, Zelenskiy said relentless, intense battles were ongoing in the eastern regions of Donetsk and Kharkiv, while "extremely challenging weather" was affecting areas from Kyiv region in the north to Odessa in the south. In Russian-controlled territory, Oleg Kryuchkov, a senior Moscow-installed official, said nearly half a million people were without power in Crimea, the peninsula Russia annexed in 2014. The Russian-installed heads of Crimea, of the Black Sea port of Sevastopol, and of the part of Kherson region under Moscow's control, declared days off for Monday amid reports of high winds, flooded homes and snowbound roads, and damaged buildings.