KYIV: Ukraine urged residents of Kyiv and several other areas to limit electricity use as it seeks to recover from Russian strikes on the power grid while the elderly and vulnerable were preparing for a voluntary evacuation of war-ravaged Kherson.
Citizens in the recently liberated southern city of Kherson, where Kyiv says Russian troops destroyed critical infrastructure before leaving earlier this month, can apply to be relocated to areas where security and heating issues are less acute.
Ukrainians are most likely to live with blackouts – a daily occurrence across the country – at least until the end of March, the head of a major energy provider said on Monday.
Russia’s response to military setbacks in recent weeks has included a barrage of missile strikes against power facilities that left millions without electricity as winter sets in and temperatures drop below freezing.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said that half of the country’s power capacity had been knocked out by Russian rockets.
In his nightly video address, he urged people to conserve energy, particularly in hard-hit areas such as Kyiv, Vinnytsia in the southwest, Sumy in the north and Odesa on the Black Sea.
“The systematic damage to our energy system from strikes by the Russian terrorists is so considerable that all our people and businesses should be mindful and redistribute their consumption throughout the day,” he said.
“… Try to limit your personal consumption of electricity.”
In a Telegram message for Kherson residents – especially the elderly, women with children and those who are ill or disabled – Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk posted a number of ways residents can express interest in leaving.
“You can be evacuated for the winter period to safer regions of the country,” she wrote, citing both security and infrastructure problems.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the blackouts and Russia’s strikes on energy infrastructure are the consequences of Kyiv being unwilling to negotiate, the state TASS news agency reported late last week.
On Monday evening, Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said that Russia was bombarding Kherson from across the Dnipro River, now that its troops had fled.
“There is no military logic: they just want to take revenge on the locals,” he tweeted.
For all the latest world News Click Here
