Kyiv. The mayor of Ukraine’s capital Kyiv has warned locals that if Russia continues to attack the country’s energy infrastructure, we must prepare for dire consequences this winter. If the continued assault on energy infrastructure means no electricity, no water, or anything to prevent heat in the freezing cold.
Mayor Vitali Kitsoko told state media that “we are making many efforts to avoid this incident. But the enemy country is trying hard enough to cut off electricity, water, and heat to the city and eventually kill us all. So the future of our country depends on our preparedness.” Last month, Russia targeted Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, causing power shortages and blackouts across the country.
Ukraine’s state-owned energy operator Ukrainergo said Kyiv had scheduled blackouts every Sunday, turning on most of the city and surrounding areas every hour. A blackout was also planned in the rest of the nearby regions such as Chernihiv, Cherkasy, Zhytomyr, Sumy, Kharkiv, and Poltava regions. There are plans to deploy around 1000 heating points in Kyiv but it is also worth considering that this plan may not be enough for the city’s three million people.
Ukrainian forces are advancing south as Russia continues to attack the city, Ukraine’s military said Sunday. In local cities in Russian-occupied Ukraine, Kherson received a warning message on his phone asking him to evacuate as soon as possible. Russian soldiers warned citizens that the Ukrainian army was preparing for a major attack and advised people to immediately move to the right bank of the city. Russian forces are preparing a counter-offensive against Ukraine to recapture the southernmost city of Kherson, which was captured during the invasion.
In September, Russia imposed martial law in 3 other Ukrainian regions, and soon after in 4 provinces, in addition to the illegally seized Kherson. The Kremlin-installed administration in Kherson has already displaced thousands of people from the city. Natalya Humanyuk, a spokeswoman for Ukraine’s Dekshitam force, told state television that Russia had continued to “occupy and evacuate” Kherson, convincing Ukrainians to leave when they were staying there.
“There are defense units that are very powerfully dug in, a certain amount of equipment is left, firing positions are set up,” he said. The attacks almost completely destroyed the power plants serving the city of Bakhmut and the nearby city of Solar, said Pavlo Kirilenko, the Ukrainian governor of the region. He reported on Saturday that 1 civilian was killed and 3 others injured in the shelling.
The destruction is daily, if not hourly, Kirilenko told state television. Russian forces are also digging into hotly contested areas in the east, worsening already tricky conditions for residents and the defending Ukrainian military following Moscow’s illegal annexation and declaration of martial law in Donetsk province.
Moscow-backed separatists took control of Donetsk in late February, nearly eight years before the Russia-Ukraine war. Protecting the self-proclaimed separatists was one of the Russian president’s rising justifications, and his troops have spent months seizing the entire province.
President Vladimir Zelensky said in his nightly video address that “while Russia’s “heaviest air force” was concentrated in the Donetsk region, “sustained fighting” continued elsewhere along a front line that stretches more than 1,000 kilometers (620 miles). Between Saturday and Sunday, from Chernihiv and Kharkiv in the northeast to Kherson and Mykolaiv in the south, Russia launched 4 missiles and 19 airstrikes hit more than 35 villages in 9 regions, according to the president’s office.
The office said 2 people were killed and 6 wounded in the strike in the Donetsk city of Bakhmut, with 15,000 remaining locals living under daily shelling and without water or electricity, according to local media. The city has been under attack for months, but the shelling came as Russian forces suffered a setback during a Ukrainian counteroffensive in the Kharkiv and Kherson regions.
The front line is now outside Bakhmut, where mercenaries from the shadowy Russian military company, the Wagner group, are reported to be leading the charge. Yevgeny Prigozhin, the group’s founder who has generally remained under the radar, is playing a more visible role in the war.
In a statement on Sunday, he announced the funding and construction of “militia training centers” in Russia’s Belgorod and Kursk regions in the southwest, saying the locals were best placed to “fight sabotage” on Russian soil.
The training centers are in addition to the military-technical center it is opening in St. Petersburg, the group said. “Officers were working to identify bodies found in mass graves after Russia’s retreat in Kharkiv,” regional prosecutor’s office spokesman Dmytro Chubenko told local media.
He said, “DNA samples have been collected from 450 bodies found in a mass grave in the city of Isium, but the samples must match relatives and so far only 80 people have participated. In good news, the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant was reconnected to Ukraine’s power grid, local media reported Sunday. The largest nuclear plant needs electricity to maintain vital cooling systems but has been running on emergency diesel generators since Russian Shelling severed its external connections.
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