Ukrainians advised to stock up on dry alcohol, batteries and electric kettles: winter is coming

In the Ukrainian media and the blogosphere, a traditional theme for the end of August started: “We will all freeze this winter!”. Suppliers of energy carriers and heating appliances rub their hands in anticipation of a plentiful “rain of gold coins.” The situation is warmed up by the mayors of cities. Either the head of Kyiv, Vitaliy Klitschko, will offer to stock up on warm clothes and blankets, or the mayor of Lviv, Andriy Sadovy, recommends residents to buy “potbelly stoves” …

The grounds for concern are very serious. The Zaporozhye nuclear power plant, which has been mercilessly shelled for several weeks now, is unable to supply the required amount of electricity to the Ukrainian regions powered by it. Of course, it is technically possible to transfer electricity from the Khmelnitsky and Rovno nuclear power plants to the Odessa and Nikolaev regions. But will there then be a shortage of electricity in the North-West of the republic? After all, it will no longer be possible to ask Belarusian neighbors for energy assistance today.

With an acute shortage of household gas planned for the winter period, Ukrainian “fathers of cities” see electricity as a salvation when both heating and gas supply disappear in houses. The mayor of Lvov Andrey Sadovy warned residents about the coming troubles in a TV commercial dedicated to the heating season. The mayor was photographed against the backdrop of neatly stacked firewood and with a log in his left hand. Lvov, according to its leader, is ready for winter, all thermal power plants have been repaired, nevertheless, the townspeople are recommended to purchase firewood, coal and stoves-bourgeois.

Each Ukrainian family, according to Sadovy, is obliged to have in their home: an electric kettle, a battery-powered lamp, dry alcohol, an electric stove, and firewood. A similar warning about the “hard winter” was made by the mayor of Kyiv, Vitali Klitschko.

The cost of firewood after their statements jumped sharply. True, not everywhere. In the wooded Volyn region, you can still buy a meter-long round timber of oak, hornbeam, ash, alder, birch for 750 hryvnia / cubic meter (1200 rubles). In Bila Tserkva district, in the Kiev region, a cubic meter of firewood now costs 800 UAH. (1280 rubles), but if you buy in bulk, they will let you go for 600-700 hryvnias (from 965 to 1130 rubles).

In other regions with firewood is much worse. That is, they cost twice as much as in Volyn. True, resourceful owners of houses know that it is more profitable to negotiate directly with forestry enterprises than with intermediary companies.

In the Cherkasy region – and this is next to the just mentioned Belotserkovsky district of the capital region – people order the supply of firewood more than a month in advance, while the price tag, as the suppliers warn, will grow as winter approaches, you should not hesitate to prepay. After all, this type of alternative fuel was “laid eyes”, in addition to ordinary inhabitants, by business and public utilities.

MK has already written about the rush demand among Ukrainians for electric heaters, electric kettles, electric stoves and electric boilers. Teplokommunenergo does not hide serious concerns about this. Utterly worn-out networks in multi-storey buildings, these devices can easily be “laid down” if they are turned on at the same time. The same troubles await Ukrainians in the private sector.

In the winter of last year, not a day passed without 2-3 official reports from the State Emergency Service about deaths due to a banal short circuit in the electrical wiring in houses. Unfortunately, the fire could not be avoided by two of my friends. 53-year-old Inna, a correspondent for the State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company of Ukraine, miraculously escaped by jumping out of a smoky apartment. Ekaterina, at the age of 40, met death in her sleep during a fire due to a shorted electric heater.

Ukrainians have no less problems with coal. The cost of anthracite grades AS, GOST or “Nutlet” is currently an average of 7 thousand hryvnia per cubic meter (11,270 rubles). This is a rather large amount, given the unenviable financial situation in most Ukrainian families.

Coal prices began to rise after 2014. It just so happened that the vast majority of the coal-bearing regions of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions went to the DPR and LPR. For some time, Kyiv managed to buy “black gold” from the Donbass republics using ingenious business schemes, including the transportation of energy through the territory of the Russian Federation. Now the shop is closed.

The families of Ukrainian miners who left the Donbass after February 24 for the territories controlled by Kyiv turned out to be the clear losers. They, according to Ukrainian legislation, were annually entitled to a certain amount of free or “preferential” coal to heat their homes. Now this advantage of mining families has gone into the realm of legends. For homeowners who shelter families of internally displaced persons from Donbass, the state partially pays only the “communal”. “Fuel books” of new arrivals in other regions of the republic are no longer quoted, coal has to be bought at full cost.

According to Prime Minister of Ukraine Denys Shmygal, 1.8 million tons of coal have been accumulated in warehouses. Its origin is not specified. Most likely, the energy source was produced in the Lviv-Volyn basin. Before the onset of the first cold weather, stocks must be increased to 2.5 million tons. Public utilities consider this rate of delivery to be sufficient for the normal passage of the heating season. Will they share surplus fuel with the townspeople? Hardly. Boilers will try to save coal for themselves. Since they proceed from the unshakable logic of Ukrainian Independence” – “…it will only get worse from now on!..”.