We have to brace ourselves for hard times, said Andriy Sadovyi, the mayor of Lviv, as he addressed local and international journalists in a building off the western Ukrainian city’s cobbled Rynok Square.

Winter was coming and with it “perhaps the worst-ever period for our country”, the mayor said.

For all that the missiles would continue to rain down it was the cold that the Russians believed could break the Ukrainian spirit. Stock up on fire wood, buy in heaters, insulate where you can, Sadovyi counselled. It was time for Ukrainians to resort to the “old-time methods”.

“We are in for hard weeks and months ahead. Four [electricity] substations in the region have been put out of operation and to bring them back into operation they need transformers that are not available. It is hard right now to predict what will happen tomorrow. We will do all we can to keep the medical facilities operating”, - added the Mayor.

15 missiles rained down on electricity substations in the Lviv region on Monday as part of a country-wide assault on Ukraine’s critical infrastructure that killed 20 people.

Repairs were swiftly made here and the electricity and water supply restored to much of the city by Monday evening.