Kyiv Ping-Pong: Who’s Really to Blame for the Capital’s Blackouts?

The public spat between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko has reached its peak. It looks particularly grotesque and shocking against the backdrop of the unity that politicians showed from different political camps and at every level in the spring of 2022, and even more so against the constant hum of generators. Massive Russian strikes on energy facilities and infrastructure have pushed Kyiv to the brink of an energy and transport collapse just as the harsh winter season begins.JOIN US ON TELEGRAMFollow our coverage of the war on the @Kyivpost_official. The president has once again claimed that Kyiv has been left without electricity and heating precisely because the city authorities failed to prepare for Russian strikes on infrastructure. In particular, he accused the Kyiv City State Administration of demonstrating “a lack of preparedness for the heating season and Russia’s special operation against the energy sector.” The mayor did not stay silent. He responded that the central government bears primary responsibility, and accused it of lying. “Given that the capital, incidentally, began its heating season on Oct. 16, how could it have prevented ‘Russia’s special operation against Ukraine’s energy sector?’ ... And is the president aware of the actual situation with electricity supplies in other regions amid the enemy’s constant devastating attacks? ...The central government’s mantra that Kyiv is the worst, along with constant manipulation and lies, is a bad story,” Klitschko said, adding that there had been attempts to get rid of him. Other Topics of Interest Zelensky: Russia Seeks Freedom to Use Force, Not Genuine Security Zelensky told Denmark’s parliament that Moscow has gone to war or used force abroad in nearly every decade since World War II, yet insists it needs protection. So were Kyiv’s preparations really inadequate? What could the city authorities have done – and what was beyond them – in the face of Russia’s deliberate terror campaign? And how much does the political context matter? What the head of the Kyiv City State Administration is responsible for – and what is beyond his authority First, it is important to understand that even within the city itself, local authorities cannot bear full responsibility for protecting infrastructure because only the Ukrainian state can have armed forces. Infrastructure facilities are protected by the Armed Forces of Ukraine, which, of course, coordinate their actions with the Kyiv Defense Council but operate under their own command, guided by military priorities and objectives. Nevertheless, many areas fall directly under Klitschko’s team, and the city administration has faced harsh criticism for inadequate preparations. Only now have mobile shelters – modular concrete structures installed at intersections and public transport stops – begun to appear in the capital. Dozens have been erected in other cities, allowing people to take cover quickly from ballistic missile strikes, which can reach Kyiv in minutes. Yet only two have so far been installed in Kyiv, a city with a population of nearly 3 million. The situation with permanent shelters is no better. In response to a Kyiv Post inquiry this summer, a department of the Kyiv City State Administration reported that only four new shelters had been built during the four years of Russia’s full-scale war. More than 2,000 existing shelters have been renovated, but the overall situation remains far from satisfactory. Residents have posted numerous negative reviews about them, and many people avoid shelters altogether because they are often too far away to reach before a missile arrives. The poor state of Kyiv’s shelters has even become a subject of jokes and stand-up routines. “I found a map of shelters, spent half an hour on a bus, fought with a security guard for the keys, chased out the rats, and now you’re safe, Kyiv resident! We need more responsibility,” Kyiv resident Kateryna Dubinina joked in a viral stand-up set. It is hard to call the performance of Kyiv’s public transport satisfactory. The problem is not merely that Russian attacks disrupt the electric transport, primarily the metro. The city has also failed to set clear rules for public transport operations during air raid alerts. Should municipal buses keep running? What about private minibuses? Trams? The city rail? The situation is further complicated by Kyiv’s chronic bridge problems. Russian strikes on bridges did not cause a transport collapse; they merely exposed one that already existed. Kyiv has six road bridges across the Dnipro, two of which also carry the metro. Two of them – the Paton Bridge and the Metro Bridge – have been in an emergency condition for years: the Metro Bridge since before 2014, the Paton Bridge since 2017-2018. Neither has been repaired because the cost is prohibitive. Furthermore, over the past two decades, Kyiv has undergone uneven and largely uncontrolled development, with no effective response to its spontaneous “Brusselization.” The city authorities failed to stop large-scale illegal construction, preserve appropriate building heights, or ensure a balanced distribution of jobs and residents. While Kyiv’s population is split roughly 55/45 between the right and left banks of the Dnipro, most jobs are concentrated on the right bank. Over the past 15 years, this has produced massive daily commuter flows and traffic jams – from the left bank to the right in the morning and back again in the evening. This situation was the norm even before the war. The municipal water utility is another major headache, and one that falls directly under the city authorities. Last winter, when attacks on the energy system knocked out the utility’s pumps, Klitschko said the system would have backup power by this winter. Instead, this season’s attacks on energy facilities disrupted the water supply again. It turned out the utility still had no backup power – a commitment left unfulfilled for a year. The authorities now promise to finish the work only in the coming months. Meanwhile, renovation work continues on numerous infrastructure facilities in Kyiv, including bridges, sidewalks, and roads. Such work matters. But while residents might have welcomed these projects in peacetime, public attitudes have changed during the war. To be fair to the city authorities, many roads and overpasses do require scheduled repairs, as numerous structures date back to Soviet times and are now in poor condition. What is beyond the city authorities’ control: Every third missile targets Kyiv Still, a number of Kyiv’s problems are beyond the city authorities’ control and this must be acknowledged too. Even Klitschko’s most determined critics must recognize that, at least over the past year, Kyiv has become a primary target for Russian attacks, judging by the number of missiles and drones launched at the capital. In 2025, Russia launched more than 100,000 drones and approximately 2,400 missiles of various types against Ukraine as a whole. Of these, 2,556 drones and 210 missiles – 122 cruise and 88 ballistic – targeted Kyiv. That amounts to roughly 3% of all drones and 9% of all missiles. Since late 2025, however, the picture has changed dramatically, to Kyiv’s disadvantage. Over this period, Russia has launched approximately 85,800 attack drones and around 3,060 missiles against Ukraine during this period. Kyiv and the Kyiv region have been targeted by approximately 11,000 drones and around 1,190 missiles – about 12.8% of all drones and 38.8% of all missiles. In other words, the capital’s share of drone attacks has increased roughly fivefold, and its share of missile attacks more than fourfold. When Russia strikes major substations in other regions that transmit electricity to Kyiv, the city administration has no say over how those facilities are prepared or protected. And Kyiv is a major electricity consumer: a large industrial and transport hub with a population of nearly 3 million. Kyiv’s main electricity suppliers are nuclear power plants in western Ukraine, which transmit power through substations, as well as the Trypilska Thermal Power Plant, about 50 kilometers (31 miles) south of Kyiv. Both the substations and the plant have repeatedly been hit by Russian attacks. But, the city authorities cannot influence their protection because they lie outside of Kyiv’s administrative boundaries. Political ping-pong It is no secret that a “cold war” between Kyiv’s city administration and the President’s Office began even before Russia’s full-scale invasion. President Zelensky’s team is evidently not a great supporter of decentralization, a reform launched more than a decade ago that gave cities greater control over their own budgets. During Zelensky’s presidency, several big-city mayors have been removed from running their cities through court rulings or the creation of military administrations. In Klitschko’s case, there is an added irritant: the possibility of creating a party of city mayors that could compete with the pro-presidential Servant of the People party. On July 30, 2021, Klitschko, who also leads the UDAR party, and Chernihiv Mayor Vladyslav Atroshenko, leader of the Ridnyi Dim party, signed a memorandum at the Unity Forum pledging to join forces and run together in future nationwide elections, including parliamentary ones, under the UDAR banner. According to people familiar with the matter who spoke to the author at the time, the party was expected to bring in other local political projects led by mayors of different cities. It remains unclear what has become of this project. But even then, it drew a rather negative reaction on Bankova Street, the seat of the President’s Office. Another factor is that Klitschko is a natural ally of Zelensky’s chief critic, former President Petro Poroshenko, with whom he joined forces in the 2014 elections. Furthermore, Kyiv’s governance structure has long suffered from an unresolved problem of “dual authority.” In practice, the city is run by two officials: the mayor and the head of the Kyiv City State Administration. The mayor is elected by Kyiv residents. The head of the Kyiv City State Administration is appointed by the president. Formally, the president is supposed to appoint the elected mayor to the post, but this has not always happened. Presidents have often used the position to install a rival whenever the mayor turned against the central government. This happened in 1996, when President Leonid Kuchma appointed Oleksandr Omelchenko to head of the Kyiv City State Administration while Leonid Kosakivskyi was serving as an opposition mayor. It happened again in 2010, when pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych appointed his ally Oleksandr Popov while Leonid Chernovetskyi was mayor. Klitschko currently holds both posts. During the war, however, a third was created: the head of the Kyiv City Military Administration, nominally responsible for the city’s defense. The battle for Kyiv ended back in the spring of 2022. Yet the post remains, since its holder is appointed directly by the Supreme Commander-in-Chief – the president. Today, the head of the Kyiv City Military Administration has effectively become a behind-the-scenes power in Kyiv, backed by Bankova Street and politically opposed to the mayor, although this conflict is not publicly acknowledged. Since this body was established, there has been no clear division of responsibilities spelling out which official is accountable for what. The result is a game of political ping-pong, with each side blaming the other for the city’s problems. The current situation has, in some ways, become convenient for both sides of the conflict. Each can always find someone else to blame for the city’s problems – and even be partly right. After all, even city officials do not always know exactly where one authority’s responsibilities end and another’s begin.