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Hello and welcome to Newsare. It's coming to you live from the BBC World Service Studios in London. I'm Tim Franks.

We're beginning the programme in Ukraine, a predictably cold Ukraine. It's winter after all.

But it's been made that much colder by the latest fuselade from Russia, aimed in part at the Ukrainian Energy Network.

I say in part because the targeting appeared pretty indiscriminate.

At least three people were killed, among them a four-year-old. The Russians

launched more than 600 drones and dozens of missiles, a large enough number to overwhelm

even Ukraine's battle-hardened and effective aerial defence system. We hope, if possible,

to speak to our correspondent in the capital key of Samira Hussein,

who's been to the site of one apartment block which was hit by a drone today. But while we

try and raise Samira, we'll hear from Dr. Hannah Schellest. She's Director of Security Studies at

Ukrainian Prism. It's an international affairs think tank, so

she's an expert analyst. But we wanted to talk to her today in another capacity as a resident

of the southern city of Odessa, which again, as it has been for many recent days, has received

an absolute hammering from the sky.

So what's it been like?

Many parts of the city are still without proper electricity.

And that's quite a strange feeling because you have a city full of lights,

all the Christmas decorations, and suddenly you have a totally black city.

So in many of our families, we have the small generators. It can be from four hours that your computer can work, to some of them are really big. Then you have

power banks, so you can have your internet and your telephones. But with the latest attack,

that's brought additional problems because Odessa is the old city.

...