While Russia has been targeting Ukraine’s energy infrastructure for several weeks, Kyiv is considering various solutions, including an evacuation. More than 4.5 million Ukrainians were left without electricity on Sunday night, most of them in Kyiv and its region, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his daily address, acknowledging a “very difficult” situation. .
The national electricity company Ukrenergo thus foresees a new “energy deficit” for Monday and rotating cuts from 6 in the morning until night. “Consumption must be reduced by 30%” to stabilize the network, explained Ukrenergo.
Faced with these difficulties, the New York Times reported in an article published on Saturday that the country’s capital, Kyiv, is preparing for “a total blackout that would require the evacuation of the approximately three million remaining residents of the city.”
“There is no reason to panic”
The mayor of Kyiv, Vitali Klitschko, acknowledged this Saturday in a television interview that he does not rule out a scenario of total blackout in his city: “we are calculating different scenarios to resist and be prepared.”
“If we were left without electricity or water, and you have relatives or friends outside of Kyiv, in places where there is no lack of water or heating, keep the possibility of staying longer than expected,” he advised the townspeople.
However, he added on Telegram that “there was no reason to panic” at this stage. An opinion shared by Alexander Query, journalist for the Independent of Kyiv, an English-speaking Ukrainian medium. Estimates in BFMTV that the tone of the article of New York Times it is “very dramatic” compared to how the people of Kyiv perceive the situation.
The fact that local authorities advise residents to seek emergency accommodation outside the city “is not something new,” he stresses.
Lesia Vasylenko, a Ukrainian opposition deputy, does not say anything else: “I would not say that it is an emergency call, that there is drama, it is rather a call to prepare.”
However, regular power outages force Ukrainians to adapt: ”We prepare more, we make sure we have our laptops charged,” the journalist explains.
“Electricity also has a ripple effect on communications” as people use their laptops to access the Internet, which “overloads terminals” and “greatly slows down Internet communications,” Alexander Query describes.
Volodymyr Zelensky accuses Iran
Kyiv is not the only city experiencing these difficulties. After two attacks for which the Russians and Ukrainians blame each other, the city of Kherson in southern Ukraine, still occupied by the Russian army despite the Ukrainian push, suffered a water and electricity cut on Sunday and the Kakhovka, in the same region, was damaged.
Russia is trying to make up for its military losses in Ukraine by targeting vital infrastructure to subdue that country by “freezing” its people during the colder months, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said at the G7 on Friday.
In his speech on Sunday, Volodymyr Zelensky said “he is aware that the terrorist state (Russia) is concentrating forces and means for a possible repetition of massive attacks on our infrastructure, in particular energy”, and accused Iran of supplying missiles to Moscow for this purpose.
Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, quoted by the official IRNA agency, admitted on Saturday that he had provided Russia with “a limited number of drones, months before the war in Ukraine.” This is the first time Tehran has reported delivering drones to Moscow.
Source: BFM TV
