In Ukraine, the energy situation is deteriorating, after the massive Russian strikes on the country’s electricity infrastructure on Monday 31 October. Across the country, cuts are increasing in order to stabilize the network. And for workers and small entrepreneurs, the situation becomes untenable.
With our special correspondent in Kropyvnytskyi, Stephane Siohan
Maxym, 43, is a printer by profession. Originally from Sloviansk, in the Donbass, he had to move his company at the start of the war to settle in Kropovnytskyi, a medium-sized city of 220,000 inhabitants, in central Ukraine.
For months, orders have fallen, the printing house still produces a few posters, t-shirts, but the machines are increasingly at a standstill, he explains:
If the power cuts are going to be prolonged, we’re going to have to close up shop, if there’s no power for six or seven hours, what’s the point of working? Diesel generators, it is not even possible, we do not find any more! Everyone has moved heaven and earth to find it, everyone orders it, but what arrives from abroad, they are so expensive that it is not even possible anymore.
Before the war, Maxym’s printing house provided work for 10 employees. Now he is on his own and his company has lost 70% of its turnover.
If the Russians continue to bomb the power stationsit will have to go out of business, like thousands of other companies in Ukraine.
The inhabitants of kyiv live as best they can without electricity or water
The inhabitants of kyiv largely deprived of electricity and water on Monday after a new massive attack by Russia against infrastructure. These cuts have been recurrent in recent weeks and residents are adapting as best they can. Tetyana Ogarkova, a resident of the suburbs of kyiv, tells her daily life, she is also responsible for the international department at the Ukraine Crisis Media Center.
Kyiv suburbanite Tetyana Ogarkova recounts her life under power and water cuts
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