Kyiv mayor urges freezing residents to leave as Russia attacks

KYIV – Kyiv’s mayor made an unprecedented call to residents to seek temporary refuge outside the Ukrainian capital after a Russian aerial barrage triggered widespread power shortages amid frigid temperatures.

Mr Vitali Klitschko made the plea after large swathes of the city were hit by disruptions to heating, water and power supplies – posing a hardship for residents already contending with temperatures set to drop to as low as minus 17 deg C in the coming days.

“I am appealing to residents of the capital who have the opportunity to temporarily leave the city for areas where there are alternative sources of power and heating to do so,” he said early on Jan 9 in a post on the Telegram messaging app.

The

overnight strike – involving 36 missiles and about 250 drones

– killed at least four people in Kyiv and left large sections of the city without heating and water access overnight. Half of Kyiv’s apartment blocks – almost 6,000 buildings – remained without heating, Mr Klitschko said.

One of Europe’s largest cities with a pre-war population of between three million and four million people, Kyiv has been a regular target of strikes throughout Russia’s four-year war. While the attack was not the first time it experienced significant outages, weather conditions compounded the suffering.

Facilities, including hospitals, were connected to mobile heating plants, Mr Klitschko said. With services operating in emergency mode, conditions were forecast to be difficult in the coming days, he added.

“The combined attack on Kyiv last night was the most painful for the capital’s critical infrastructure,” he said. BLOOMBERG