Ukraine MP: Winter strikes devastate energy grid (Full Transcript)

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: Now let's turn to Ukraine because President Zelensky says Russia's latest bombardment of Ukraine's energy infrastructure took advantage of the coldest days of winter to terrorize people. The strikes happened in the capital Kiev in the eastern city of Kharkiv as temperatures dropped to minus 20 Celsius overnight. The head of NATO is meeting with President Zelensky as part of a surprise visit to Kiev today, joining Ukraine's president at a memorial site commemorating victims of the ongoing war. Let's speak to Kirill a Ukrainian MP and Kirill, welcome here to BBC News. Give me an idea of what the last 48 hours have been like.

[00:00:37] Speaker 2: Hello Matthew and thank you so much for having me. The 48 hours were really tough because I think in the deep down inside our hearts we all had hopes that Russia perhaps would be afraid of American president and would keep their word, though we are telling the whole world that you cannot trust Russia and so we turned to be right which is again very unfortunate because this night was yet another night of terror, perhaps one of the worst ones because the result of this night was the most massive damage to Ukraine's energy sector and putting all of us, our families and our future to a huge threat because Ukraine's energy sector, energy infrastructure is really hanging by a thread. You just can imagine that it was more than 450 drones and more than 70 missiles attacking Ukraine throughout the country, Kiev, Harkiv, Western Ukraine, trying to bring us to the cold.

[00:01:44] Speaker 1: You've had weeks of this now, just briefly give me an idea of day to day what it's like actually getting through the day.

[00:01:54] Speaker 2: For most of the families we only have energy and electricity during the night because the load is less so you wake up at 1 a.m. when you see that the lights are on, you try to do all the chores at home, you start your washing machine, you try to clean up the clothes, you wash dishes, you try to charge all the devices and give your family a little bit of this calm time and then in the morning when it's dark outside and cold outside you just have to go on with your day hoping that you will not be killed by the missile or drone and supporting the ones who are in the worst position, trying to give away warm food and warm tea to the people who are hiding in the shelters of unbreakability.

[00:02:42] Speaker 1: Is it time for Europe to do more? We keep seeing Donald Trump fail to see or deal with Vladimir Putin as the perpetrator here, so what should Europe, NATO do now in response to all of this?

[00:02:59] Speaker 2: There is not a simple solution but there is a simple direction, is weaken Russia and strengthen Ukraine and most of all what can be done right now and should be done right now is going ahead and confiscating Russian assets that are being frozen and to use them for the sake of warming Ukraine, protecting Ukraine and compensating of their defence expenses. This is the right and fair and just way to go ahead and right now we are only waiting for a political decision because on the legal side there has been so many variants of what can be done.

[00:03:35] Speaker 1: Okay Rudik, we are out of time but thank you so much for your time, for joining us here on today's Verified Live here on BBC News, thank you.