According to the Centre for Energy Research, in recent weeks the intensity of enemy strikes on Kyiv’s energy facilities has increased 4 times.
“Over the last 6 weeks there have been very clear, focused and massive strikes on Kyiv’s energy hub. They were also present in summer, but in summer they were more spread out. Conditionally, in summer out of 150 strikes per month on energy facilities across the country Kyiv accounted for 15, and now 60. A large part of these strikes were ballistic missiles. And it must be recognised that they have managed to achieve some success. Not the one they had been counting on. But as a result we lost several important capabilities to supply electricity to Kyiv. At the same time, they tried and continue to strike certain key nodes inside Kyiv that are important for the distribution of electricity,” — Oleksandr Kharchenko said.
Preparing for winter in the capital and other cities is complicated by the fact that the government has blocked local communities’ funds in the State Treasury’s accounts. “Currently, due to a lack of funds, settlements are blocked, including for the equipment that should now be sent to Kyiv and other cities to complete preparation for the heating season. There is quite a large amount of equipment that is 70% paid for, and they cannot even close the payments to install it. I know that all the city mayors are now running around the Cabinet of Ministers, trying to unblock at least some payments, because this is a real problem. And secondly — objectively there are simply not enough people literally at every site,” Oleksandr Kharchenko said.
Recall that the government and the State Treasury Service suspended payments and the execution of payments to local communities totalling about 20 billion UAH as part of savings measures and funding shortfalls. As the Association of Ukrainian Cities noted, because of this communities may not have time to prepare for the heating season, which typically begins in mid-October.
