In brief: President Volodymyr Zelensky convened his first meeting in a new regular format with Ukrainian mayors and local self-government representatives on Friday, Nov. 13, focusing on winter preparedness, energy infrastructure defense, and municipal budget capacity. Zelensky demanded accurate, real-time reporting from local officials after criticizing multi-day blackouts and misleading reports in Bila Tserkva and Brovary.
President Volodymyr Zelensky held his first meeting in a new direct coordination format with Ukrainian mayors and local government representatives on Friday, Nov. 13, focusing on winter preparedness, energy infrastructure protection, and civilian support amid intensifying Russian strikes.
Writing on Telegram, the president announced that the new consultation format will convene regularly to align municipal, regional, and central government responses to wartime utility disruptions.
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“Energy, sky protection, internal security threats, communications resilience, and assistance to our people – all of this must be protected, restored, and ensured. We frankly discussed all the challenges that exist and those that may arise,” Zelensky stated.
The inaugural session brought together the mayors of Kharkiv, Dnipro, Uzhhorod, Ivano-Frankivsk, Chernivtsi, Cherkasy, Mykolaiv, and Vinnytsia, alongside the acting mayors of Odesa, Zaporizhzhia, Lutsk, and Rivne, representatives of local self-government associations, and the head of the Kharkiv Regional Council.
Participants reviewed municipal budget capacities and mechanisms for supporting vulnerable households during subzero temperatures. Zelensky stressed that unvarnished, accurate reporting from local officials is vital to resolving outages quickly.
“The key thing is that real, prompt information about what is happening on the ground comes from every region and city, followed by appropriate decisions,” the president emphasized.
Zelensky demands accurate outage reporting from local authorities
The new municipal format follows criticism from Zelensky earlier on Friday regarding prolonged blackouts and misleading official dispatches in the Kyiv region.
During his evening video address, the president described multi-day electricity outages in the cities of Bila Tserkva and Brovary as “absolutely unacceptable,” revealing that he had confronted officials over discrepancies between local reports and the actual conditions experienced by residents.
“Today, I had a tough conversation with government officials during our coordination call,” Zelensky said.
“The situation in Bila Tserkva and Brovary is absolutely unacceptable – when people were left without electricity not just for hours, but for several days. At the same time, reports from the ground were giving a different picture.”
Zelensky demanded immediate corrective action from officials responsible for grid restoration, warning that “problems must be solved. They must be addressed, not concealed.”
Scale of Russian attacks on Ukraine’s power grid
The government coordination drive comes as energy executives and diplomats warn that Russia’s winter campaign poses a severe threat to Ukraine’s power generation and transmission network.
In an interview with AFP published on Friday, DTEK Chief Executive Officer Maxim Timchenko warned that Russian forces have doubled their deployment of ballistic missiles compared to previous years, concentrating massive firepower – including up to seven ballistic missiles, 25 cruise missiles, and dozens of drones – against single power stations.
Timchenko noted that Moscow has expanded targeting to high-voltage substations and transmission lines, preventing operational power plants from delivering electricity to households, and cautioned that several damaged stations will remain offline until at least next summer.
Concurrently on Friday, Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha met with UN humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher in Kyiv, urging UN agencies to prioritize restoring Ukraine’s power and heating systems as Moscow attempts to deprive millions of households of basic utilities ahead of the fifth winter of war.
An Oct. 19 report by the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine concluded that Moscow’s systematic assaults against Ukraine’s energy infrastructure demonstrate a deliberate intent to deprive civilians of life’s necessities and may amount to crimes against humanity.
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