If Kyiv loses power completely, the city will ask its around three million residents to evacuate, Kiev’s security chief added The New York Times.
During Sunday, the electricity is cut in a total of seven regions in Ukraine – including Kyiv and Kharkiv to relieve the electricity grid, which is severely damaged after Russia’s repeated bombings against electricity supply infrastructure.
– We realize that if Russia continues with these attacks, we could lose our entire electricity system, says Roman Tkatjuk, head of security in Kyiv, to The New York Times.
If it goes that far, the authorities in the capital expect that they will have at least twelve hours’ warning that the system is about to go down completely.
In that case, “we will start informing the people and ask them to leave,” Tkatjuk told the newspaper.
At the moment, the situation is sustainable and there are no indications of a large number of people fleeing Kyiv, he adds. But that can change quickly if the functions of the city that depend on electricity stop working.
At the same time, the city is preparing 1,000 heating centers that will protect civilians from the Russian attacks. Most of them are located in school buildings, but the authorities do not want to say exactly where they are located, as they could have been attacked more easily.
In the player above: TV4 Nyhetern’s foreign correspondent Jona Källgren is on the ground in Ukraine and analyzes this.