Average winter temperatures in Ukraine hover around 27 degrees Fahrenheit and are expected to reach minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit in parts of the country in the coming months, the World Health Organization said.

“This winter will threaten the lives of millions of people in Ukraine,” Dr. Hans Henri Kluge, regional director for Europe at the United Nations health agency, said on Tuesday.

Earlier this week, Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said that some 8,500 generator sets are being imported into Ukraine daily.

As the attacks came on Wednesday, battles continued in the east, where Russia is pressing an offensive along a stretch of the front west of the city of Donetsk that has been in the hands of its proxies since 2014.

The Donetsk region has been the scene of fierce attacks and constant shelling for the past 24 hours, Zelenskyy said.

In Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula that Russia annexed to Ukraine in 2014, Russian air defenses were activated and two drone strikes were repelled on Tuesday, including one targeting a power plant near Sevastopol, the governor-installed said. Russia, Mikhail Razvozhaev in a Telegram. mail.

Sevastopol is the home port of the Russian Black Sea Fleet.

Cheryll Simpson reported from Kyiv and Henry Austin from London.

Associated Press contributed.