How Zaporizhzhia Prepared for Winter
No matter how well protected the central heating system is, no city is able to shield it from the consequences of attacks the Russians are capable of, Rehina Kharchenko believes. So Zaporizhzhia, too, is building a decentralised system of boiler houses and heating substations using cogeneration units.
In addition, she stresses, alternative power supply systems require large amounts of fuel. One day of the water utility’s operation, Rehina Kharchenko gives as an example, needs 30 tonnes of diesel. Where to physically store such a quantity of fuel, given the frequent attacks on filling stations, is a challenge for any local authority.
“And there are far too many such challenges. So the overall message is: is the system ready — it is ready. Is it protected — it is protected. But whether that is enough for everyone in Zaporizhzhia to have heating and water, probably even the Lord God does not know,” the acting mayor notes.
Resilience Plan and State Support
The Resilience Plan for Zaporizhzhia differs somewhat from those for cities that are not in frontline areas, Rehina Kharchenko emphasises.
“Since the summer, the security situation here has deteriorated greatly. In one of Zaporizhzhia’s districts, all the central streets are covered with netting. These are tunnels. A year ago, we could not even have imagined something like this.
So for us, the Resilience Plan is also a local protection plan in several areas: anti-drone netting, increasing the number of modular shelters, applying protective film to vehicles, municipal institutions, hospitals and so on,” the acting mayor said.
Without the state, Kharchenko notes, no frontline city can manage such measures on its own — not only because of the cost, but also because of the need for specialist professionals.
“The only body dealing with this issue and coordination here was the regional military administration, but all our municipal enterprises and structural units that needed to be involved were involved,” Kharchenko says.
The Resilience Plan, she says, has not yet been fully implemented, but the work has slowed due to the government’s suspension of capital spending (the reason is a lack of funds in the budget. — Ed.).
“And this is no longer even about the Resilience Plan. I am talking about what is critical for any city: ensuring current, urgent, as the Prime Minister put it, expenditures. I have a municipal enterprise, ‘Elektrotrans’, which provides all public transport, and it could not sign a new fuel contract for a week. A week. Simply no one came to the tender, because they understood that the local self-government body would not pay — the Treasury is not processing the invoices. The city had fuel left for four days,” the head of Zaporizhzhia said.
“I very much hope that all the processes related to receiving international assistance and voting in the Verkhovna Rada will come together into one puzzle, and that we will still return at the beginning of December to a normal situation of payments and financing of current expenditures,” Rehina Kharchenko added, “because for Zaporizhzhia the issue of the emergency response fund is extremely important as well. I cannot come to a person after shelling, when half their roof is gone or all the windows and doors have been blown out, and say: ‘Sorry, we could not procure building materials through a tender, so the municipal enterprise Zaporizhremservis will not come and do any work for you. Or it will not come because there is no fuel.’ That must not happen.”
Overall, Kharchenko believes frontline cities need somewhat greater attention from the state, because they have more security issues directly linked to their very existence.
“If there are not, roughly speaking, enough shelters, protection, anti-drone protection and so on, people will simply leave. And if we say we are preserving life in frontline areas, we want to have a strong, powerful rear, logistics, excellent hospitals nearby, including for defenders, both men and women. So frontline areas 100% need to be given more assistance,” the head of Zaporizhzhia concluded. She added, however, that her city is not being neglected by the government.
Threat to Zaporizhzhia’s Bridges
The Dnipro Hydroelectric Power Station, which also serves as a road bridge connecting the two banks of Zaporizhzhia, was attacked during the full-scale invasion with 60 missiles. In March 2024, Rehina Kharchenko says, the road surface was damaged.
“Everything has been restored. And experts say it is impossible to destroy it with something from the sky. Only to blow it up from the inside. Repair work is now under way there in one direction,” the acting mayor says.
And if previously the target was the power station itself, recently guided aerial bombs have also been aimed at other bridges, including the new ones built shortly before 2022, she notes. If the Russians critically damage one of them, the city will consider the option of pontoon crossings, Rehina Kharchenko said.
How Business Operates in Zaporizhzhia
The local authorities do not have any “super programmes” to support business, the head of Zaporizhzhia notes. There are programmes for partial reimbursement of the cost of alternative energy sources for small and large enterprises. The city has also joined the government programme to insure businesses against war risks — it compensates 50% of the first premium payment.
“Do you know how many people came to us? Zero,” Rehina Kharchenko noted. Her position is that business needs the authorities not to get in the way, and to ensure clear communication and the same rules of the game for everyone.
“The first thing I did when I came in (to the post of acting mayor. — Ed.), I said: ‘Please bring me all the applications from entrepreneurs who wanted to lease some land plots.’ The number of contracts over these three years has increased sevenfold. That is the story of supporting business,” she said.
However, the worsening security situation is also affecting the ability to do business in the city.
“Since the summer, almost all our large shopping centres have had their windows blown out. Big retail has been hit, chain operations. Silpo is even thinking of leaving the city altogether — it is unprofitable for them to stay, given the huge losses of the business entity itself.
I think we will be moving underground. Because we can see that it works. Underground schools, underground nurseries, underground hospitals. There you can continue a more or less normal life. If we need to build underground shopping centres, we will think of something,” the acting mayor said.