"It can be as low as -1°C in the apartments." How serious is the heating crisis in Kyiv?

After the latest large-scale shelling of the energy sector on January 9, half of Kyiv's buildings were left without heating. Just like two weeks before, Russia shelled the capital's combined heat and power plants (CHP). But this time, the consequences were much more severe more serious.

The city authorities have recommended draining water from in-house systems to prevent it from freezing. Not everywhere this has been done, which has already led to burst pipes, according to numerous posts by Kyiv residents on social media.

In which districts of Kyiv is the worst with heat and when it can return. Dmytro Kruglikov found out. This is the second article about the heating crisis in Kyiv, read the first one here.

Why was it leaked?

When the Russians shelled three Kyiv thermal power plants in late December 2025, about 40% of the capital's buildings were left without central heating for a day and a half. At the time, the temperature in Kyiv was just below freezing, which protected the city from the worst-case scenario of rapid freezing of the heating medium (water) in buildings until central heating was restored.

After the cold snap in January, the threat to the capital's heating system is more acute. At temperatures of -15, the water in the intra-house networks, deprived of the inflow of newly heated water, can turn into ice in three hours. It will break pipes and batteries, making it impossible to quickly restore heat to homes, even if the boiler house or CHP plant is repaired.

Perhaps the only way to prevent this from happening in the event of a prolonged interruption of heat generation during severe frosts is to drain the water from the building systems. The responsibility for this procedure lies not only with the city authorities, but also with building managers.

How prepared is the city for the water merger? Even before 2025, district departments were conducting special training for management companies and heads of condominiums, Oleksiy Tikhonov, an adviser to the deputy mayor, and the managers themselves told us.

However, when management companies and condominium chairmen were informed at 8 a.m. on January 9 that heat production would be suspended, municipal enterprises met the information with "semi-panic," says Maxim Petrenko, chairman of the board of the Kyiv Association of Condominiums and Housing Cooperatives.

They are less maneuverable compared to condominiums and private owners because they have a large number of buildings to maintain and not enough staff. The reason is that management companies can reserve only 50% of their employees from mobilization, explains Tikhonov.

As a result, the destruction of the house pipes could not be prevented, testify numerous posts kyiv residents on social media, with photos of flooded basements and broken batteries.

It is difficult to estimate how widespread the pipe bursts are. According to Oleksiy Tikhonov's observations, there are several dozen such cases. The reasons for each of them should be considered separately, he emphasizes. After all, some photos show worn-out pipes, which suggests that they could have caused the breakthrough.

Overall, the number of accidents due to non-drainage of water from heating networks is insignificant compared to the more than 11,000 high-rise buildings in Kyiv, says the deputy mayor's adviser.

What will happen where the water has been drained

Draining the water is a technical measure that does not mean a prolonged absence of heating, the Kyiv City State Administration (KCSA) claimed on Friday. Why, then, is the city only recommending, but not ordering, the draining of water from all city buildings? Tikhonov explains that the technical condition of the housing stock varies.

New and thermally modernized high-rise buildings cool down more slowly. If they are equipped with individual heating stations and circulation pumps, the water in the networks can be pumped to prevent it from freezing for a while. This way, there is a chance to hold out until the heat supply is restored.

The situation is more complicated in houses with vertical heating system wiring, which were usually built before 2008-2010. They account for 65-70% of residential development in the city, estimates the head of the Kyiv Association of Condominiums and Housing Cooperatives.

According to Petrenko, with vertical distribution in a house, it can take up to a week to fully restart heating after the heat supply is restored. However, in many cases, the latter still needs to be waited for.

Where the heat is worse and when it will return completely

On Friday evening, the Kyiv authorities announced that they had begun to restore district heating to the city. On Sunday the 11th, it was reported that heat supply had been restored to five thousand of the six thousand homes that had lost central heating. However, in practice, such estimates mean little in terms of whether each individual apartment has heating, Alexey Tikhonov explained to us.

Even if the pumping of coolant from the production site through the main networks is resumed, water may be supplied to homes with insufficient pressure or low temperature. The speed of full-fledged restoration of heat supply will depend not only on the condition of the house networks, but also on the speed of filling the main networks, Maksym Petrenko explains to us.

Even in the off-heating season, hot water is supplied through the main networks. But now, at least in some parts of the system, there is no coolant at all. "Therefore, the speed of recovery will also depend on how empty the overall system is," says Petrenko, head of the Kyiv Association of Condominiums and Housing Cooperatives.

Problems with electricity also delay the return of heat. Although houses with individual heating stations are generally less vulnerable to freezing, individual heating equipment can only be powered by electricity.

In many areas, heating is distributed from central networks to several buildings at once through central heating stations (CHS). They also have pumps that do not work without power. They were supposed to have a backup power supply. But in the event of long power outages of 35-40 hours, which are already happening, for example, in the Desnianskyi district, the generators may not be enough.

District boiler houses, of which there are about 170 in Kyiv, are more independent of electricity supply. They supply heating directly to homes. Most boiler houses operate on the right bank of the city.

However, they also had to reduce the temperature of the coolant. On Saturday, after a large-scale power grid failure, some boiler houses started supplying water to other areas to maintain their heating systems. As a result, the water temperature in the networks of ordinary consumers of these boiler houses decreased.

The availability of heating may vary not so much in different parts of the capital, but in different neighborhoods and buildings. However, Tikhonov calls the situation the most difficult in areas where emergency power outage – Holosiivskyi, Desnianskyi, and Pecherskyi districts.

In the latter case, the geographical problem is added to the electricity problem. Pechersk is located on the hills, and therefore water will come to them last and with low temperature and pressure parameters.

"The system will be filled gradually, we will have to wait until the network warms up. But even when the water comes to a certain house, it may happen that there is no electricity in the house to accept it," Tikhonov explained.

In some of the houses in Pechersk, the temperature has already dropped to +5°C, according to social media posts.

What to prepare for in the future

The consequences of the shelling for the heating infrastructure in Kyiv could have been worse, Oleksiy Tikhonov, an adviser to the deputy mayor of Kyiv, tells LIGA.net. Despite all the difficulties, power engineers are gradually restoring heat supply. "They've done something incredible before, but now it's like Tolkien," the source believes.

However, there are still two months of winter ahead, during which massive attacks on the energy sector are likely to continue. Each time it will be more and more difficult to restore the system to its previous state. This makes longer heat outages likely. And, as a result, apartments may be cooled down to subzero temperatures celsius, Tikhonov does not rule out.

In this situation, the "normal reaction of the authorities" is to warn that if a person can provide more comfortable conditions for temporary residence, this should be taken care of. For people who cannot travel outside Kyiv to a private house with stove heating, "heated invincibility points" will be set up in the capital. But they are unlikely to be enough for a city of four million people, warns an adviser to the deputy mayor.