With no heat, water or power Kyiv prepares for a 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, Ukraine’s capital, the mayor of Kyiv, is warning residents that this winter they must prepare for the worst. 

“To avoid this we are doing everything. For the city to be without heat, without electricity, without water supply, in general, so we all die, our enemies are doing everything, let’s be frank. 

Mayor Vitali Klitschko told state media “The future of each of us and the future of the country depends on how we prepared for different situations”. 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Sunday, in his nightly video address to the nation that about 4.5 million people were without electricity. “In the spring, we must get through this winter and be even stronger” he called on Ukrainians to endure the hardships. 

Over the last month Russia has focused on striking Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, causing power shortages and rolling outages across the country. In parts of the city and the surrounding region Kyiv was having hourly rotating blackouts Sunday.

Ukraine’s state-owned energy operator, Ukrenergo, said Rolling blackouts also were planned in the Chernihiv, Cherkasy, Zhytomyr, Sumy, Kharkiv and Poltava regions.

About 1,000 heating points Kyiv plans to deploy, but it’s unclear if that would be enough for a city of 3 million people.

Ukrainian forces are pushing forward in the south, as Russia intensifies its attacks on the capital. Ukraine’s military said on Sunday to evacuate as soon as possible residents of Ukraine’s Russian-occupied city of Kherson received warning messages on their phones urging them. For a massive attack Ukraine’s army was preparing and told people to leave for the city’s right bank immediately,  Russian soldiers warned civilians.

To seize back the southern city of Kherson Russian forces are preparing for a Ukrainian counteroffensive, during the early days of the invasion which was captured. 

In the four provinces in September Russia illegally annexed Kherson as well as three other regions and subsequently declared martial law.

Out of the city in Kherson the Kremlin-installed administration already has moved tens of thousands of civilians. 

A spokeswoman for Ukraine’s Southern Forces, Nataliya Humenyuk, told state television Russia has been “occupying and evacuating” Kherson simultaneously, trying to convince Ukrainians that they’re leaving when in fact they’re digging in.

“There are defense units that have dug in there quite powerfully, a certain amount of equipment has been left, firing positions have been set up”, she said.

In a fiercely contested region in the east Russian forces are also digging in, worsening the already tough conditions for residents and the defending Ukrainian army following Moscow’s illegal annexation and declaration of martial law in Donetsk province.

The region’s Ukrainian governor, Pavlo Kyrylenko, said the attacks have almost completely destroyed the power plants that serve the city of Bakhmut and the nearby town of Soledar. He reported late Saturday, Shelling killed one civilian and wounded three. 

“The destruction is daily, if not hourly”, Kyrylenko told state television.

Before Russia invaded Ukraine in late February Moscow-backed separatists controlled part of Donetsk for nearly eight years. For the invasion, protecting the separatists’ self-proclaimed republic was one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s justifications, and his troops have spent months trying to capture the entire province.

From Chernihiv and Kharkiv in the northeast to Kherson and Mykolaiv in the south according to Zelenskyy’s office between Saturday and Sunday, Russia launched four missiles and 19 airstrikes hitting more than 35 villages in nine regions. The strikes killed two people and wounded six.

According to local media 15,000 remaining residents were living under daily shelling and without water or power, in the Donetsk city of Bakhmut. 

During Ukrainian counter offensives in the Kharkiv and Kherson regions the city has been under attack for months, but the bombardment picked up after Russian forces experienced setbacks.

A shadowy Russian military company, are reported to be leading the charge, the front line is now on Bakhmut’s outskirts, where mercenaries from the Wagner Group.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, is taking a more visible role in the war, the founder of the group who has typically remained under the radar. 

The funding and creation of “militia training centers” in Russia’s Belgorod and Kursk regions in the southwest, saying that on Russian soil locals were best placed to “fight against sabotage”, On Sunday in a statement he announced. 

The group said that the training centers are in addition to a military technology center and it was opening in St. Petersburg.

A spokesperson for the regional prosecutor’s office, Dmytro Chubenko, told local media that in Kharkiv, officials were working to identify bodies found in mass graves after the Russians withdrew.

He said in the city of Izium DNA samples have been collected from 450 bodies discovered in a mass grave, but the samples need to be matched with relatives and so far only 80 people have participated.

The Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant was reconnected to Ukraine’s power grid, local media reported Sunday, in one sliver of good news. To maintain vital cooling systems Europe’s largest nuclear plant needs electricity, but since Russian shelling severed its outside connections it had been running on emergency diesel generators.

Source:- https://blogspacecap.com/with-no-heat-water-or-power-kyiv-prepares-for-a-winter/