Energy emergency: schools in Kyiv closed until February

The closure will begin on Monday and last until February 1st. The capital’s authorities also announced that they would dim street lighting to a fifth and turn off all decorative lighting.

Bitter cold in Ukraine, millions without electricity

The Ukrainian President Wolodimir Selenskij had declared an energy emergency for the capital region after the attacks of the past few days. The heating in a total of 6,000 residential buildings failed in the bitter cold; according to Mayor Vitali Klitschko, 100 buildings were still without heating on Friday. The electricity supply situation remains “very difficult,” said Klitschko.

The UN children’s fund UNICEF complained about the precarious situation, particularly of children in Ukraine. Millions of families in Ukraine “have to survive for days without heating, electricity and water supply”, children and their families live in temperatures of minus 18 degrees without heating “in constant survival mode”, said the head of UNICEF programs in Ukraine, Munir Mammadzade, on Friday. UNICEF “once again called for an end to attacks on residential areas and the civilian infrastructure on which children depend.”

Russia has been attacking them in particular for months Ukrainian energy infrastructure and has already plunged entire cities into darkness and cold. Many people can only heat sporadically or not at all.

In addition to Kyiv, other cities are also affected. On Thursday evening, 440,000 people in the city of Kharkiv in northeastern Ukraine were without power after a Russian airstrike, according to Zelenskiy.