Heating restored in freezing Kyiv: mayor
70 Russian missiles fired in latest shelling
KYIV: Heating has been fully restored to Kyiv after the latest Russian bombardment that targeted water and power infrastructure, the capital’s Mayor Vitali Klitschko said yesterday.
“The city is restoring all services after the latest shelling,” Mr Klitschko said on the Telegram messaging app. “In particular, the capital’s heat supply system was fully restored. All sources of heat supply work normally.”
Ukrainian officials said Russia fired more than 70 missiles on Friday in one of its heaviest barrages since the Kremlin’s Feb 24 invasion, forcing emergency blackouts nationwide and cutting access to heat and water.
Temperatures in Kyiv and many places across Ukraine were below freezing yesterday morning, with forecasts expecting them to dip to minus 6 degrees Celsius in the capital by the evening.
Kyiv is by far the largest city in Ukraine with an estimated population of about 3 million, with up to two million more in the Kyiv region.
As of late Saturday, a third of the city remained without power.
Sergei Kovalenko, chief executive of YASNO, which provides electricity for Kyiv said late on Saturday that access to power has been increasing with each hour.
“The situation remains difficult and critical,” Mr Kovalenko said on his Facebook account.
The volley of missiles unleashed on Friday came as President Vladimir Putin held extensive meetings with the military top brass overseeing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, where Moscow has stepped up bombardments.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said late on Saturday electricity had been restored to almost six million Ukrainians, but noted ongoing problems with heat and water supplies, and “large-scale outages” in many regions.
“The main thing today is energy,” he said in his nightly address. “There is still a lot of work to do to stabilise the system.”
In the capital Kyiv, the metro had stopped running so that people wrapped in winter coats could take shelter at underground stations, but Mayor Vitali Klitschko said on Saturday the service had resumed.
Water supply had also been restored and 75% of the city’s population had their heating supply back.
In the eastern city of Kharkiv, power had also been fully returned, regional governor Oleg Sinegubov said on Saturday, after the strikes had left Ukraine’s second city without electricity.
Ukraine’s national energy provider Ukrenergo had imposed emergency blackouts in response to the strikes, warning the extent of the damage in the north, south and centre of the country meant it could take longer to restore supplies than after previous attacks.
In Russia, Mr Putin sought proposals from his military commanders on how to proceed with the Ukraine offensive, according to the Kremlin.
The Kremlin released footage on Friday of Mr Putin presiding over a round-table meeting with Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of General Staff Valery Gerasimov among other top brass.
After a series of humiliating battlefield defeats, Russia has since October pursued an aerial campaign against what Moscow says are militarylinked facilities.
But France and the European Union have said the suffering inflicted on freezing civilians constitutes war crimes, with the bloc’s foreign policy chief calling the bombings “barbaric”.
Russia’s defence ministry said on Saturday the strikes had targeted Ukraine’s military and energy facilities, while also disrupting “the transfer of weapons and ammunition of foreign production”.