Lviv First Deputy Mayor Andriy Moskalenko has said the city is preparing for the most difficult scenario for the 2026-27 winter heating season and that Ukrainian cities are ready to help one another.
"We very often hear that this winter will be difficult. And this is not just words, this is the experience we had last winter, and the experience of what the enemy is doing by attacking Ukrainian cities now… Lviv is preparing for winter. We have approved our city resilience plan. This is 96 separate projects... Of course we need to prepare for the most difficult scenario, to have the mental readiness to accept that the worst could happen," Moskalenko said during a discussion titled "Winter is coming: are the state and society ready?" at the Interfax-Ukraine press center on Thursday.
According to him, active meetings in residential buildings will begin in Lviv from next Monday so that every resident knows the algorithm of actions.
"And of course, when there is a difficult situation, every Ukrainian city helps another. In particular, this past winter more than 50 specialists worked in Kyiv for more than five weeks, helping with the restoration of housing stock... So we, Ukrainian cities, will always support one another. And here, I think, the question is about being close, exchanging information, and preparing for the most difficult things," Moskalenko said.
Poltava Acting Mayor Kateryna Yamshchykova said the city is also implementing a resilience plan, in particular actively repairing water drainage networks, while stressing the importance of ensuring the resilience of all networks so they can operate under blackout conditions.
"We have also introduced a separate resilience program for educational institutions in the community… There is also an additional program for launching solar power plants at municipal enterprises of critical infrastructure. This is not only about energy resilience in terms of having our own generation, it is also about the fact that such plants must have storage stations, batteries that can be charged not only from the sun but also from the general grid," she said.
Regarding mutual support between cities, Yamshchykova said Poltava utility workers took part last winter in major work to "de-freeze" multi-story buildings in Kyiv and gained relevant experience. "Of course we would never want this to be repeated anywhere. But our teams gained additional experience working through these difficult procedures," she said.
Serhiy Shmyhol, a deputy of the Cherkasy City Council and member of the commission on rules, health care and housing and communal services, said the city is "more or less prepared" for the heating season and already has a fairly well-established diversified generation network and about 20 MW of reserve capacity.
"The second scenario is a hardcore option, if we don't have gas… Most likely, we will be able to keep buildings in a non-freezing regime. And hospitals, as a base – separate methods and scenarios are now in place to provide them with heat," he said.
The deputy said the city is preparing for non-standard scenarios and the possibility that the winter will be difficult. "Thanks to the fact that we have a very powerful company, Cherkasyteplokomunenerho, which provides heat, plus a large enterprise, Cherkasyteploelektrotsentral, the former Khimvolokno, which generates electricity and heat for part of the city, having such a system we are relatively well provided with heat, and, God willing, we will get through this winter more or less normally," Shmyhol said.
During the discussion, the Civil-Military Movement (CMM) NGO presented its "Winter. The City Will Hold" project, which envisages comprehensive preparation of communities for the 2026/2027 heating season – from risk assessment to specific action algorithms in the event of shelling, prolonged blackouts, loss of heat and water supply, and other emergencies. The second stage of the project will begin with the onset of cold weather and will be aimed directly at helping community residents.
