Kyiv mayor urges residents with relatives outside the city to consider temporarily leaving
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko told AFP that residents who have friends or family elsewhere should consider leaving the capital for a time. He stressed, however, that he will never call for a full evacuation.
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko has said that residents of the Ukrainian capital who have friends or relatives outside the city should consider leaving it temporarily. He made the remarks in an interview with AFP.
"Every day brings new reports of destroyed buildings, of people injured and killed, as the shelling of our city intensifies," the mayor said. "Today the issue is survival," he added.
No call for full evacuation
Klitschko emphasized that he would never urge the whole city to evacuate. In his view, that is exactly what Russian President Vladimir Putin wants. "The best scenario for Putin is that we all leave and hand over our empty cities and our country to him," the mayor said.
Preparing for winter
The mayor said Kyiv is setting up backup heating systems for the winter and building up reserves of fuel, food and drinking water. Even so, he warned that proper preparation may not be enough if air defenses fail to repel the attacks.
Attacks have intensified
Russia began stepping up its attacks on Kyiv in September. In the period from September 22 to 28 alone, daily strikes killed 13 residents and injured more than 160. In early October, Russian forces also started hitting some of the city's most important transport links: the bridges across the Dnipro River, which had not been targeted before.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said that Putin ordered Russian military commanders to disregard the rules of warfare when carrying out airstrikes on Ukraine.
