Electricity and heating outages across Ukraine have added urgency to preparations for winter
(Picture: Getty Images)Residents in Kyiv have been warned they may need to evacuate if the Ukrainian capital loses water and power, as further Russian attacks on energy infrastructure are feared.
Mayor Vitali Klitschko urged residents to “consider everything”, including a scenario where Kyiv loses opower and water, and to consider “spending some time” with friends or family.
Mr Klitschko accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of deliberately targeting civilian infrastructure, during a television interview on Saturday.
“His task is for us to die, to freeze, or to make us flee our land so that he can have it. That’s what the aggressor wants to achieve,” Mr Klitschko said.
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia was “concentrating forces and means for a possible repetition of mass attacks on our infrastructure” in his nightly address.
“First of all, energy,” he added.
More than 4.5 million Ukrainians are already without power, Mr Zelensky said, amid concerns that support for Ukraine could waver as the war’s impact on energy and food prices persists into winter.
Presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said earlier on Twitter that Ukraine would “stand” despite Russian attacks on its energy infrastructure, by marshalling air defence, protecting infrastructure and optimising consumption to do so.
The country faced a projected shortfall of 32 per cent in power supply on Monday, Sergei Kovalenko, the chief executive of YASNO, a major provider of energy to the capital, said on his Facebook page.
In the south, Russia and Ukraine continued to trade accusations as Ukraine advances on the city of Kherson.
Regional governor Yaroslav Yanushevych said Russian forces destroyed about 1.5km of power lines, cutting supply to the city of Beryslav.
“It is likely that there will be no electricity in Beryslav until it is fully freed from occupation,” Yanushevych wrote on the Telegram messaging app, adding that power lines to Kherson had also been destroyed.
On Sunday, Russian news agencies said shelling by Ukrainian forces damaged Ukraine’s vast Russian-held Nova Kakhovka dam, upstream of Kherson on the Dnipro river. They gave no supporting evidence, and Reuters could not immediately verify the reports.
Russian state-owned TASS quoted an emergency services representative as saying a rocket launched by a US-made HIMARS missile system had hit the dam’s lock, damaging it.
The official called the incident an “attempt to create the conditions for a humanitarian catastrophe” by breaching the dam.
