Kyiv's Mayor urges residents to prepare warm clothing and blankets for winter

OLENA ROSHCHINA – MONDAY, 15 AUGUST 2022, 11:26

The mayor of Kyiv, Vitalii Klychko, calls on the residents of Kyiv to prepare for a cold winter at home, as there may be interruptions in gas and electricity supply.

Source: Vitalii Klychko, in an interview with Babel

Quote from Klychko: "I don't want to reassure everyone and say that everything will be fine. We face harsh realities and have to envisage various scenarios.

Gas is the responsibility of the government; they have given us assurances that there will be enough gas for the population and that it will not become more expensive. This is the expectation. But we cannot rule out that there may be acts of terrorism, attacks on natural gas gate stations. We also take this scenario into account.

We have bought generators and fuel for them. They will go first of all to hospitals, kindergartens and schools.

We will do everything possible and impossible that is up to us so that homes can be kept warm. But I ask everyone to prepare warm clothes to be worn at home and warm blankets, because we cannot rule out that the temperature in homes will be several degrees below normal. The norm is 21 degrees, but it may have to be 19° or 18°."

Details: Klychko added that "there may be power outages", but the authorities will do everything they can to ensure this does not happen.

"If there are power outages, we have generators. If there is no heating or no gas, we have reserves of fuel oil. We will be able to function autonomously for a while. But this would be for a fairly short period of time to allow a solution for the problem to be found," he clarified.

The mayor also said that in March there were approximately one million Kyiv residents, and now, according to data from mobile operators regarding the number of phones in the city, there are approximately three million people in the capital - although not all of them are Kyiv residents.

"About 120,000 internally displaced people have been officially registered as of today, and according to our calculations, there are about 200,000 of them in all. And about one million Kyiv residents have not yet returned to the city," Klychko said.

He also emphasised that "Kyiv was the target of the aggressor and remains the target of the aggressor", but gave assurances that the capital is now much better prepared for a possible attack by the Russian forces.

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