Medics pictured forced to use mobile phone torches in surgery during Ukraine blackouts

Ukrainian medics have been pictured using mobile phone torches to provide light as they perform operations after a power cut in Kyiv.

Regular breaks in electricity supplies are becoming part of life for many Ukrainians as Russian shells hit infrastructure.

Hospitals are low on resources and surgeons are also having to carry out operations at times without electricity due to the extreme conditions.

And extraordinary images have shown medics carrying out surgery in Kyiv on a patient last Wednesday, November 30, with the use of mobile phone torches to provide light.

Russian shelling cut off power in much of the recently liberated Ukrainian city of Kherson on Thursday, just days after it was restored amid Moscow’s ongoing drive to destroy key civilian infrastructure as freezing weather sets in.

While in Kyiv, Mayor Vitali Klitschko warned the capital’s millions of residents that they should stock up on water and preserve food to see them through a winter that could prove miserable if more energy infrastructure is damaged.

He also urged people to consider leaving the city to stay with friends or family elsewhere, if possible.

“Trying months lie ahead. The enemy still possesses substantial resources,” Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov said. He added, however, that “signs are accumulating that ( Russia ) needs a pause at all costs.”

Ukraine has faced a blistering onslaught of Russian artillery fire and drone attacks since early October. The shelling has been especially intense in Kherson since Russian forces withdrew and Ukraine’s army reclaimed the southern city almost three weeks ago.

Last week footage showed a power cut while open heart surgery was being carried out on a 14-year-old boy.

“They managed to finish this surgery, and fortunately this child survived, and the surgery was successful. But the first couple of seconds … it was very horrible,” Mikhail Zagrychuk, a transplant surgeon reportedly said.

Ukraine’s presidential office said Thursday that at least two civilians were killed and six others wounded nationwide by the latest Russian shelling. In Kherson, a 70-year-old woman was killed in her apartment and a 64-year-old man was wounded on the street. A 15-year-old boy died when a hospital in the northeastern Sumy region town of Bilopillia was hit, the presidential office said.

Local authorities said about two-thirds of Kherson had electricity as of Thursday night. Some residents congregated at the train station or at government-supported tents that provided heating, food, drinks and electricity to charge cellphones.

Walking toward an evacuation train, 79-year-old Liudmyla Biloshysta said she decided to leave and join her children in Kyiv because she feared conditions in Kherson would worsen.

“The strike was so massive our house even began to shake,” Biloshysta said of the latest barrage. “These bombardments make me so scared.”

Alluding to her birth during World War II, she said “I was a child of war and now I’m a granny in wartime.”

In the eastern Dnipropetrovsk region, Russian forces fired “from evening till morning” at Ukrainian-held towns facing the Russian occupied Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant across the Dnieper River, the regional governor said Thursday.

Elsewhere in eastern Ukraine, Russian forces continued their attempts to encircle the Donetsk region city of Bakhmut, focusing on several villages around it and trying to cut a key highway.