Winter in Kyiv Will be Hard – Mayor Klitschko

“We will do everything possible and impossible, which depends on us, to keep the houses warm,” the Mayor of Kyiv, Vitaliy Klitschko, has said, warning citizens of a harsh winter ahead. 

“We live in harsh realities and have to be ready with different scenarios,” Klitschko noted speaking in an interview with Babel. 

According to the Major of Kyiv, gas is the responsibility of the government. He said that the Cabinet of Ministers has assured city authorities that there would be gas for the population and that there would be no price increase.

“This is the expectation. But we do not rule out that there may be acts of terrorism or attacks on gas stations. We have also taken this scenario into account. We bought generators and fuel for these generators. First of all, they will go to hospitals, kindergartens, and schools. We will do everything possible and impossible, which depends on us, to keep the houses warm,” reported Klitschko.

At the same time, the mayor asked everyone to prepare warm clothes and blankets. However, he does not rule out that the temperature inside homes will be a few  degrees below normal. “The normal temperature is 21 degrees, but it may be 19 or 18,”  Klitschko.

According to him, there may be power outages, but the city authorities will try to ensure that this will not happen.

“If there are power outages, we have generators. If there is no heating or gas, we have reserves of fuel oil. Therefore, we will be able to function autonomously for a while. But this is a fairly short period that is needed to solve the problem,” Klitschko added.

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“Everything will depend on the situation on the front. If there is good news from there, there will be success for the Armed Forces. I am sure that people will return. In March, Kyiv was home to approximately one million citizens because most women and children had left the city, leaving behind men who were ready to resist a possible invasion,” Klitschko noted, discussing the current situation with the capital’s population.

“Now, according to the data of mobile operators on the number of phones in the city, we know that there are approximately three million people in the capital. Not all of them are from Kyiv. As of now, about 120,000 internally displaced persons have been officially registered, and according to our calculations, there are about 200,000. And about one million citizens have not yet returned to the city,” the Mayor of Kyiv added.