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Putin's 'brutalization of Ukraine's people is barbaric' -Blinken

STORY: "Heat, water, electricity...these are President Putin's new targets. He's hitting them hard. This brutalization of Ukraine's people is barbaric," Blinken told a news conference in Bucharest following a two-day NATO summit.

Blinken accused Putin of trying to divide the Western coalition and to force it to abandon Ukraine by freezing and starving Ukrainians and driving up energy costs not across Europe but around the world.

Russia has been carrying out huge attacks on Ukraine's electricity transmission and heating infrastructure roughly weekly since October, in what Kyiv and its allies say is a deliberate campaign to harm civilians and a war crime.

The United States and Western allies have concentrated their attention on providing Ukraine with cash as well as relevant equipment to boost Kyiv's energy resilience. Russia's recent attacks have left millions of people in the dark and without heating amid sub-zero temperatures.