ISTANBUL 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has proposed the UN Security Council adopt a resolution condemning all forms of "energy terror" as Russian strikes on cities across Ukraine decapacitate the country's energy infrastructure.

"Ukraine proposes that the Security Council adopt such a resolution condemning any forms of energy terror,” Zelenskyy told the Security Council in a video address late on Wednesday.

Zelenskyy also demanded that Russia be barred from voting on “the issues of its aggression,” based on Moscow’s actions to block “any attempt by the UN Security Council to fulfill its mandate.”

“It is nonsense that the veto right is reserved for the one who is waging a criminal war. It is necessary to lead the world out of this impasse,” he said.

Zelenskyy further referred to attacks by Russian forces on Wednesday which hit a residential building in the city of Vyshhorod in the Kyiv region, killing four and injuring 34 people, which he described as “one of the main points of the Russian formula of terror.”

He further added that almost 70 missiles were directed against Ukraine’s energy infrastructure on the same day.

“Russian terror led to a blackout – and not only in Ukraine. The light also went out in neighboring Moldova. But the understanding of what Russia wants to achieve with such strikes should not disappear anywhere in the world. Energy terror is an analogue of the use of weapons of mass destruction,” he said.

He added that it is a crime against humanity when “tens of millions of people are left without electricity, heat and water as a result of Russian missiles hitting energy facilities.”

Russia's UN Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said that Russia has to oppose not only Ukraine but NATO countries, which he said are waging a proxy war on Moscow by providing all sorts of military support to Kyiv.

“In order to weaken and destroy the military potential of our opponents, we launch high-precision strikes against energy and other infrastructure that is used to supply Ukrainian armed formations with weapons, first of all Western, facilitate their logistics and liaison,” Nebenzia said in his address to the Security Council.

Nebenzia further said that residential buildings are damaged and civilians get killed due to the deployment of Ukrainian air defense systems in “the centers of Ukrainian cities rather than on the outskirts.”

“Undermining the combat capability of the Ukrainian army, which threatens the security and territorial integrity of Russia, is one of the goals of our special military operation. This task will be carried out by military means until the Kyiv regime adopts a realistic position that would allow to negotiate and try to resolve the issues that forced us to start the operation,” he said.

Explosions were reported earlier on Wednesday in the Odesa, Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kyiv regions of Ukraine.

Ukraine’s national energy company Ukrenergo announced later that it has enacted emergency blackouts across the country due to hits on the country's infrastructure.

Energoatom, Ukraine's national nuclear energy company, added that all power units in four nuclear power plants in the country had automatically disconnected due to a decrease in frequency.