EU cities urged to donate power generators to Ukraine

Cities across Europe were on Wednesday urged to send spare generators to Ukraine to help the country through the winter in the face of Russia's attacks on electricity infrastructure.

Ukraine's power grid came under bombardment again as European Parliament president Roberta Metsola launched an appeal to get vitally needed equipment to the EU's war-torn eastern neighbour.

Millions of Ukrainians are enduring blackouts as Moscow targets key infrastructure. Fears are mounting over how they will get through the winter with temperatures already starting to fall.

"Ukrainians are currently without electricity as a result of Russia's attacks on critical civilian targeted infrastructure," Metsola said.

The mayor of the Italian city of Florence, Dario Nardella, who heads a network of local authorities in Europe, said he was looking to coordinate a group of 200 cities around the continent to send generators they have in storage to Ukraine.

"We've got the potential of sending several hundred, even industrial-sized, generators which will be able to produce quite a lot of power," Nardella said.

Andriy Yermak, chief of staff at the Ukrainian presidency, said that generators were needed to help ensure people's basic needs as Russia bombards Ukraine.

But he said the top priority for Kyiv was to get other heavy equipment needed for the "immediate recovery" of the country's power grid.

"We need to ensure generation and sustainable distribution of energy to sustain our economy," Yermak said.