Follow-Up: Russian Strikes Caused Kyiv's Worst Water Outage of the War; Zelenskiy and Mayor Klitschko Trade Blame Over Preparations
Kyiv — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko traded public accusations on November 6 over who was responsible for the capital's deepening energy and water crisis. Days earlier, Russia's mass strike on Ukraine's energy system on November 3 had cut power to Kyiv's water facilities, causing the worst water outage of the full-scale war in the city of more than 3 million people.
Kyiv's water utility said the strikes cut off supply across the city, leaving residents in most districts without running water for more than 24 hours, with some restaurants in the centre even closing their bathrooms; the system was stabilised only on the afternoon of November 4, and refilling the network and restoring pressure took hours more. Mykhailo Yatsuk, director of the Institute of Water Problems and Land Reclamation, called it the most serious water outage in Kyiv since the war began and warned the situation was likely to worsen in winter. Reuters also reported that Kyiv's bridges across the Dnipro River had come under attack for the first time in the war, that metro services were frequently halted, and that city-wide water outages now last hours and are more frequent than in previous years.
Writing on X on Friday, Zelenskiy called the challenges 'extremely serious' and suggested they were partly the consequence of city-level failures to implement heating-season preparation decisions. Less than an hour later, Klitschko replied in a video address, saying the government had dragged its feet in approving a resilience plan for the city, and that without air-defence systems protecting key facilities, their restoration, stable operation and very existence were in question.
The feud between the two men is long-running. Klitschko told public broadcaster Suspilne on November 5 that his repeated requests for a meeting with Zelenskiy to address Kyiv's problems had gone unanswered; Zelenskiy said he had approached a number of former top officials to lead Kyiv's military administration, a presidentially appointed wartime authority, but none had agreed. (Source: Reuters)
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Source: Reuters
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：乌克兰扎波罗热火力发电站（资料图）。照片：Ігор Діклевич，CC BY-SA 4.0，经 Wikimedia Commons。 / Photo: The Zaporizhzhia thermal power station in Ukraine (file photo). Photo: Ігор Діклевич, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
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