Ukraine is helping evacuate people out of Kherson because they're afraid that shattered power infrastructure will bring a devastating winter
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- Russian forces withdrew from the southern city of Kherson last week — a major victory for Ukraine.
- But damaged power infrastructure and plunging temperatures are making life difficult for civilians.
- The government will help evacuate anyone who wants to leave the city, a top Ukrainian official said.
Ukrainian officials are offering to help evacuate people out of the newly-liberated city of Kherson because they're afraid that shattered power infrastructure will lead to a devastating winter freeze.
Iryna Vereshchuk, Ukraine's deputy prime minister, told a televised news conference on Saturday that some people living in the cities of Kherson and Mykolaiv have said they'd like to move away from the area and that Ukraine would help them, The New York Times reported.
"Currently, we are not talking about forced evacuation," she said, according to The Times. "But even in the case of voluntary evacuation, the state bears responsibility for transportation. People must be taken to the place where they will spend the winter."
Vereshchuk said evacuations will be possible in the coming days and said that one option would be to use Mykolaiv as a transit point before sending people further west into safer areas of the country.
Mykolaiv, which has been under constant Russian shelling, is about 40 miles (65 kilometers) to the northwest of Kherson.
Last week, Moscow ordered a withdrawal of troops from Kherson — the largest city that was occupied by Russian forces since the start of the invasion in February. It marked one of the most significant victories for Ukraine since Russia invaded.
But while the city celebrated its liberation, officials also expressed fears that the cold winter and lack of basic necessities, like heating and water, will cause a humanitarian disaster.
Much like the rest of the country, Kherson is facing an extreme shortage of electricity, water, and heat after Russian forces launched a series of airstrikes on critical power stations and gas and water supplies in the last months.
During their retreat from Kherson, Russian forces blew up two major power-providing facilities in the region, plunging thousands into darkness, Volodymyr Kudrytskyi, the head of Ukraine's power grid operator Ukrenergo, said last week.
In a Facebook post, Kudrytskyi called Russians "a vile horde that knows only destruction."
Some Kherson residents told The Guardian they're trying to collect as much wood as possible to keep warm.
"I have already started using the burzhuika," a 71-year-old resident, Kateryna Sliusarchuk, told The Guardian, referring to Ukraine's traditional homemade welded metal stove. "Of course, I'll have to wave my arms around and look for wood every day to protect myself from the cold. And it won't be easy at my age."
But Ukrainian officials have already them not to head into the woods without asking for permission first due to concerns that they might step on mines, tripwires, and unexploded shells left behind by Russian forces, The Guardian reported.
The first snow arrived in Ukraine last week, marking the beginning of what could be the hardest winter in the country's history.
But it's not just Kherson that is struggling. Officials in Ukraine's capital city Kyiv are preparing for the possibility of a complete evacuation because they are unable to maintain their electricity grid.
"We understand that if Russia continues such attacks, we may lose our entire electricity system," Roman Tkachuk, the director of security for the Kyiv municipal government, told The New York Times earlier this month.
The World Health Organization said last month that the lack of access to fuel or electricity in Ukraine "could become a matter of life or death."
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