Electricity supply situation in Kyiv region remains ‘critical’ after attacks: Official

By Burc Eruygur

ISTANBUL (AA) – The electricity supply situation in the Kyiv region, Ukraine, remains “critical” after drone and missile attacks, the head of the regional military administration said on Tuesday.

“The situation with electricity supply remains critical. After recent drone attacks and rocket attacks, power restoration continues. I would like to emphasize that with each … shelling, the complexity and duration of repair work increases,” Oleksiy Kuleba said on Telegram.

Kuleba also said that Ukraine’s national energy company Ukrenergo has implemented emergency shutdowns due to the large-scale damage in the country’s energy infrastructure.

“80% of the region is without electricity. The most difficult situation is in the Buchansky, Vyshhorod, Obukhiv and, partially, Fastiv districts. These are more than 30 communities,” Kuleba noted.

Kuleba further said that critical infrastructure, such as hospitals and heat and water supply facilities, are prioritized for electricity supply, adding that the administration is doing everything to restore power supply as soon as possible in coordination with Ukrenergo and Ukraine’s private energy provider DTEK.

On Monday, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko announced that critical infrastructure facilities were damaged due to several explosions in the Solomianskyiand and Shevchenkivskyi districts of the capital.

Klitschko said that energy and heating engineers are working to quickly stabilize the situation in order to provide supply, further noting that these explosions were caused by Russian attacks.

Klitschko added that the Obolonskyi, Podilskyi and Desnianskyi districts suffered the most from the shortage of electricity supply in the capital, as emergency shutdowns were put into effect by Ukrenergo.
Separately, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that more than 22 million Ukrainians were disconnected from the country’s energy supply and more than 10 million people had their water and heat supplies cut off due to Russian strikes late on Friday.

Ukraine's energy infrastructure has been the target of Russian attacks since the start of Moscow’s “special military operation” in late February, which increased dramatically after an explosion on Oct. 8 damaged Russia's key Kerch Bridge connecting the country with the Crimean peninsula, which Moscow illegally annexed in 2014.