Power was restored to over 800,000 residents in Kyiv on Saturday, a day after Russia launched major attacks on the Ukrainian power grid that caused blackouts across much of the country, and European leaders agreed to proceed toward using hundreds of billions of frozen Russian assets to support Ukraine's war effort. Ukraine's largest private energy company, DTEK, said Saturday that "the main work to restore the power supply" had been completed,
After President Vladimir Putin sent his army into Ukraine in 2022, the United States and its allies prohibited transactions with the Russian central bank and finance ministry and blocked €350bn of sovereign Russian assets, mostly European, US and British government bonds held in a European securities depository. Reuters reported that European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen wants the European Union to find a new way to finance Ukraine's defence against Russia using the cash balances associated with Russian assets frozen in Europe.
