According to a report by "Russian RT" on October 12, Ukrainian parliamentarian Marianna Bezugraya recently warned that Kiev residents should consider temporarily evacuating the city this winter.
She noted that the Ukrainian military has not been able to effectively stop Russia’s continued strikes on energy facilities, and that Kiev’s electricity and heating systems are at risk of collapse.
Bezugraya bluntly said: Russia can destroy almost any key infrastructure in Ukraine at will. The only question is how many missiles and drones it launches.
She reminded the public to be prepared for the worst, and even warned that Kiev could be completely dried in the winter – in a state of darkness, water shortages, and warming.
At the same time, the Kiev Mayor's Office also admitted that recent rounds of missile attacks have caused power outages and water supply interruptions in some Urban area, and damaged dozens of energy facilities.
While emergency repairs are ongoing, faced with increasingly intense attacks and aging power supply systems, Ukrainian authorities have to face the reality that if Russia continues to target energy networks, the capital is likely to be plunged into a darker and colder nightmare than it was in the winters of previous years.
Currently, Kiev is in a typical state of high pressure.
It seems that there are still traffic and crowds on the street, but the basic operation of the city is already in jeopardy.
The energy crisis is the primary hidden danger, heat power plants are repeatedly hit by missiles, power supply is interrupted, and many residential areas can only guarantee lighting for a limited period of time per day.
The water supply system relies on the power pump station, and once the power is stopped, the source water is immediately interrupted.
Residents in some districts have been forced to pick up water from fire bulbs or wells.
Food prices skyrocketed, heating fuel and generators became the new hard currency, and even candles and batteries were snapped up.
The bigger threat is that the average winter temperature can be as low as minus ten degrees. Once heating is completely interrupted, millions of residents will face a survival crisis.
Former Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the Ukrainian Air Defense, Roman Anko, recently said that the Patriot system is only 6% efficient and can hardly intercept improved Russian missiles.
For ordinary Kiev citizens, this means that they may fall into the whirlpool of power outages, water cuts, and loss of contact again at any time.
The war is far away from the front line, but in fact, it penetrates every household through energy and cold.
It should be noted that the cold winter in Kiev is the kind that can really freeze many people to death.
In the past three years, the cold winter in Ukraine has turned into tragedy many times.
At the end of 2022, after 72 hours of continuous power outages in the capital, temperatures dropped to zero and eight degrees, and several elderly and wanderers were found to die from low body temperature.
Kiev's residences are mainly Soviet-style central heating. Hot water is delivered from the power plant to each building. As long as the power plant or the main pump room is bombed, the whole city will be turned into an ice cave.
The apartment is poorly insulated, and the room temperature after heating will break the ice within six hours.
Elderly people, infants, heart disease patients first cannot withstand, ambulances can not arrive due to the delay in the road, and the hospital's spare generator can not support for several days.
For many families, staying means betting on their lives, betting that electricity and gas will still be available, and betting that this winter will not be too cold.
However, even so, a complete withdrawal from Kyiv is not realistic.
By 2025, Kiev has a permanent population of approximately 2.8 million, plus the surrounding satellite cities, with an actual living space of more than four million.
To relocate such a large population in such a short time, no transportation, no fuel, no accommodation conditions are entirely available.
The railway system in Ukraine took months to transport four million people during the country’s evacuation in 2022, and now the railways and roads have long been overloaded, and it is not possible to transfer so many people.
Another problem is that the western Ukrainian cities themselves have a large number of refugees, resources are tight, and infrastructure is outdated.
More importantly, it is symbolic that Kiev is the capital of Ukraine, and once the population is cleared, it is not the same as acknowledging the inability to guard, it is equivalent to allowing Russia to win a psychological war.
Therefore, Bezugraya's request to evacuate is a kind of shirking responsibility. She is not really asking everyone to escape, but telling people that the government cannot hold Kiev's energy supply and you have to find a way yourself. If something really goes wrong, don't blame me for not reminding me.