The mayor of Ukraine’s capital Kyiv is warning residents that they must prepare for the worst this winter if Russia keeps striking the country’s energy infrastructure – and that means having no electricity, water or heat in the freezing cold cannot be ruled out.
“We are doing everything to avoid this,” Mayor Vitali Klitschko told state media.
“But let’s be frank, our enemies are doing everything for the city to be without heat, without electricity, without water supply, in general, so we all die.
“And the future of the country and the future of each of us depends on how prepared we are for different situations.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address to the nation Sunday that about 4.5 million people were without electricity. He called on Ukrainians to endure the hardships, and that “we must get through this winter and be even stronger in the spring than now.”
Russia has focused on striking Ukraine’s energy infrastructure over the past month, causing power shortages and rolling outages across the country. Kyiv was having hourly rotating blackouts on Sunday, in parts of the city and the surrounding region.
Ukraine’s state-owned energy operator Ukrenergo has said rolling blackouts were also planned in the Chernihiv, Cherkasy, Zhytomyr, Sumy, Kharkiv, and Poltava regions.
Kyiv will deploy about 1,000 heating points, but it’s unclear if that will be enough for a city of 3 million people.
Watch the video above.
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