UN rights chief says Ukraine "human rights emergency"

Ukraine is a "human rights emergency", United Nations human rights chief Volker Turk said on December 9.

"You have 17.7 million in need of humanitarian assistance; you have 9.3 million requiring food and livelihood assistance," CNN quotes Turk as telling a news conference in Geneva, Switzerland.

"You have about 7.4 million refugees, you have 6.5 million people internally displaced."

Turk said the country is "suffering" from not only continued missile attacks but from destroyed civilian infrastructure.

"The energy sector is heavily affected, the heating system, the electricity grid, there are people who live in sub-zero temperatures without heating, and without electricity," he said.

"There are these blackouts, so you can imagine these are millions of people who suffer this every day."

On December 5, Russia launched a fresh barrage of missiles toward Ukraine, cutting off water and electricity supplies in some areas and killing at least one person in the Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih and at least two people in Zaporizhzhia, according to local authorities.