Russian strikes cause Kyiv’s worst water outage of full-scale war

The mass Russian strikes on Ukraine’s energy system on Nov. 3 triggered Kyiv’s most severe water outage during the full-scale invasion, three people with knowledge of the matter, including a government advisor, told the Kyiv Independent.

Residents throughout Kyiv were left without water for more than 24 hours after the strikes cut power to the city. While authorities haven’t confirmed the exact number of consumers left without water, outages were reported in most districts of the city, including the center, where some restaurants even had to close their bathrooms to customers.

"This is the most serious water outage in Kyiv since the war began. It is also expected that the situation will worsen in the winter," Mykhailo Yatsuk, director of the Institute of Water Problems and Land Reclamation, told the Kyiv Independent.

Russia’s mass attack on Nov. 3 was the largest on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure this year, causing widespread power outages in the capital. Without electricity to power Kyiv’s huge, centralized water system, water is unable to be pumped to households and businesses.

While Kyiv has suffered water outages before, they only lasted for a few hours following an attack, rather than more than a day.

The situation has worsened over the past year largely because Russian strikes in January crippled power generation at three of Kyiv's combined heat and power plants, Oleksandr Kharchenko, director of the Energy Industry Research Center, told the Kyiv Independent.

"We used to always have the option to power water supply from one of the CHPs, but as of now, we have lost this opportunity," Kharchenko said.

According to Kyivvodakanal, the capital’s city-run water company, the Russian attack effectively cut off all water supply in the city on Nov. 3. By the afternoon of Nov. 4, the company's workers had managed to stabilize the water system, although it still took several hours to fill the water supply networks, stabilize the pressure, and for water to begin flowing to consumers again.

The Kyiv city administration encouraged residents to use public water pumps in the case of power outages and published a map locating water points. Generators will keep the pumps working during power outages, although the generators will have to be switched off intermittently for maintenance, the administration said.

Both Yatsuk and a manager at a water pump company, who spoke to the Kyiv Independent on the condition of anonymity to speak freely, said that residents should stockpile water supplies ahead of winter, when the energy grid will be overloaded, resulting in even more severe power outages.

"Previously, we didn’t think that we needed water reserves. But now we do. The situation is getting worse after every attack," the manager said.