SpaceWar.com reports: “President Vladimir Putin vowed Thursday to keep battering Ukraine’s energy grid despite an outcry against the systematic attacks that have plunged millions into the cold and dark as winter sets in.

He instead blamed Ukraine for initiating a trend of attacking civilian infrastructure, pointing to a blast on a key bridge between the Russian mainland and the annexed Crimean peninsula that he recently visited.

‘There’s a lot of noise about our strikes on the energy infrastructure of a neighbouring country. This will not interfere with our combat missions,’ Putin said at a military awards ceremony in the Kremlin.

Weeks of Russian missile barrages across Ukraine have crippled key infrastructure at a critical time, as temperatures drop ahead of long winter months that already have brought suffering to Ukrainians lacking water, heating and gas.

He presented the strikes as a response to the explosion in October on the Kerch bridge and also accused Kyiv of blowing up power lines from the Kursk nuclear power plant and for not supplying water to Donetsk in eastern Ukraine…”