Heating Genocide: Are Odesa Authorities Lying?
During the summer and autumn of this year, city residents became witnesses to the ‘filming of a blockbuster’ inspired by the Odesa authorities’ preparations for the heating season. Generators were sought, fuel was stockpiled for them… Odesa residents were constantly told about this through the media.
For example, in an interview with Suspilne.Media published on 27 July, the director of the municipal enterprise Odesa City Heating Supply said: “This week we received the final 43 generators. We have already completed the lion’s share of the preparation work: replacing pipelines and repairing boilers in our boiler houses. We are renewing pumping equipment that failed in one way or another during last year’s blackouts. Precisely because we expect another difficult winter, it may turn out to be even more difficult.
Thanks to foreign partners who provide us with continuous support, we are renewing equipment at our boiler houses and replacing electrical and pumping equipment.”
Odesa City Council member Petro Obukhov, in an interview published on 1 August, was more specific: “Yes, we are talking about 156 municipal boiler houses. If electricity disappears in winter because of shelling, heating systems can freeze within a day and fail. To prevent this, the boiler houses were equipped with backup generators.”
On 14 September, at a briefing at Media Center Ukraine — Odesa, Volodymyr Karpych, deputy director of the Life Support Systems Department of the Odesa Regional Military Administration, saidthat 85% of Odesa Oblast’s critical-infrastructure facilities were equipped with generators. Of these, 75% were water utilities and 95% were heat-energy facilities.
This was also stated in a Facebook post on Trukhanov’s page dated 19 October: “As for our municipal enterprise Odesa City Heating Supply, it is almost 100% ready for the start of the heating season. In addition, all municipal boiler houses are provided with alternative sources of electricity.”».
It is worth noting that, intentionally or not, this post received exactly 666 likes. It gives the impression that higher powers were trying to show that this was an outright lie. Whether that is so is for everyone to decide. But even before the official start of winter, bad weather reached Odesa on 26 November. The response from the heating utility was immediate — to turn off heating completely. This was announced on the official Facebook page of Odesa City Heating Supply. Odesa residents were most outraged by the final phrase: ‘Thank you for your understanding.’ It is unclear what exactly they were supposed to understand: that the municipal heating company was simply not prepared for difficult heating-season conditions, or that its management did not care about Odesa residents.
The authorities began trying to justify themselves on 26 November.
In response to outraged Odesa residents, a representative of the municipal heating company began saying that supposedly ‘small boiler houses are equipped with generators. Large ones cannot be equipped with generators for technological reasons.’
Trukhanov picked up the same version and changed his earlier statements, saying at around midnight on 26 November that supposedly ‘as of today, all small boiler houses are equipped with generators.’ As can be seen, there was no longer any talk of all municipal boiler houses.
Today, simple questions arise:
— How truthfully do the Odesa authorities headed by Trukhanov inform Odesa residents about the situation in the city, and can their statements be trusted at all?
— What will happen to heating in Odesa when Russian forces again begin large-scale attacks on Ukraine’s critical infrastructure? Did the Odesa authorities prepare at all for blackouts this winter?