The mayor of Kyiv is again urging residents to leave or prepare reserves of food and medicine.

KiivKyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko has urged residents of the Ukrainian capital for the second time this January to leave the city if they can. due to the energy crisis caused by Russia's massive attacks"I am speaking to the residents in all sincerity: the situation is extremely difficult and may worsen. Make sure you have reserves of food, water, and essential medicines. If you have the option of leaving the city for a place with alternative sources of energy and heat, do not rule it out," he said on Friday. The thermometer has dropped to -16 degrees Celsius in recent nights in the Ukrainian capital.

Municipal services and teams from the electricity company DTEK are working against the clock to restore power, but according to the mayor, a total of 1,940 buildings in the city remain without heating, representing 16% of the total. Following the Russian attack on January 20, as many as 5,600 buildings were without heat, during the coldest winter in the country in the last decade. Taking advantage of the low temperatures, the Russian military has intensified drone and missile attacks (including ballistic and hypersonic missiles) against energy infrastructure in the capital and other major cities such as Odessa and Dnipro. Putin is using the cold as a weapon of war.

Ukraine's energy situation worsened "significantly" on Friday after recent Russian airstrikes, which triggered emergency power cuts in most regions, according to the Kyiv electricity grid operator. DTEK's CEO, Maksim Timchenko, told Reuters that the situation is "close to a humanitarian catastrophe."

Energy Minister Denis Xmihal said on Thursday that Ukraine's energy system had suffered its most difficult day since a widespread blackout in November 2022, when Russia began bombarding the power grid.

Most of the apartment blocks that still lack heating are concentrated on Kyiv's left bank, east of the Dnipro River, not in the city center. Olha Movtxan, a pensioner who lives in a neighborhood on the east bank, tells ARA that she is lucky because she has four or five hours of daylight each day and because her apartment building's old central heating system is still working. The worst part for her is when she has to climb the ten flights of stairs to her apartment and the elevator is out of order. But she doesn't complain: "How can I complain? I think about the soldiers in the trenches in that horrible cold."

Faced with the strain on energy infrastructure, Klitschko had previously urged Kyiv residents to leave the city if they had an alternative. On Wednesday, the mayor said that 600,000 residents of the city of 3.6 million had heeded his advice.

Reproaches between Klichkó and Zelensky

However, Kyiv's energy crisis has strained relations between Klitschko and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Zelensky has blamed the mayor—a former professional boxer and one of his main political rivals—for failing to adequately prepare the city for winter and the anticipated Russian attacks on energy infrastructure. Klitschko defends himself by saying that this is the responsibility of the army.

The controversy is particularly sensitive following accusations of corruption against prominent members of Zelensky's governmentbecause of the alleged misappropriation of funds intended to protect power plants. But the president and mayor are promising Ukrainians more resources. The city council has set up more "invincibility points," an epic term for tents and equipment where people can warm up, have tea, and charge mobile phones and batteries. Water tankers will also be deployed to ensure the water supply if pumping stations run out of power.

For his part, Zelensky has declared a national emergency and convened a crisis cabinet. In his speech Thursday at the Davos Economic Forum, the president warned that "Russia is trying to freeze Ukrainians to death." In Kyiv, people are crossing their fingers for spring to arrive soon.