Director of the "City Institute" Oleksandr Serhiienko: Klitschko cites numbers, while from the Presidential Office it sounds like "everything is very bad"

Another wave of enemy attacks on Kyiv has sharpened the long-standing conflict between the central and local authorities. After the president’s statement about the capital’s failure to prepare for winter and the shelling, Vitali Klitschko delivered a harsh countercritique of the Cabinet in parliament.

Against this backdrop, the editorial team of Korotko pro is launching a series of interviews with experts of various orientations, presenting both pro-presidential and pro-mayor perspectives. The first speaker was the director of the center "City Institute," Oleksandr Serhiienko. We spoke with him about whether the accusations from the Presidential Office have real grounds, whether Kyiv faces a removal of the head of the Kyiv City State Administration along the lines of the Yanukovych era, and what city residents should prepare for this winter.

Klitschko’s arguments look convincing

- So, did Klitschko really fail to prepare Kyiv for winter, or is this a continuation of the long-standing feud with the Presidential Office?

- In his speech in the Verkhovna Rada, Vitali Klitschko cited specific figures regarding the generators purchased and ready for winter, mobile boiler units, diesel power plants, and pumps. In other words, he provided factual indicators of work. At the same time President Volodymyr Zelensky released no data about Kyiv’s unpreparedness and simply said that "everything is very bad."

However, to assess any activity you need to cite concrete numbers. Zelensky didn’t provide those, whereas Klitschko’s first deputy Petro Panteleiev, during the thematic roundtable "Energy resilience of Ukrainian communities: readiness for winter 2026/2027," noted that the Comprehensive Resilience Plan for the territorial community of the city of Kyiv has been implemented at 80 percent. Therefore, in this case Klitschko’s words appear more substantiated.

- …And there aren’t any problems?

- Of course there are problems, but they are not of a subjective nature. Whatever the mayor and the Kyiv City State Administration (Kyiv City State Administration, KCSA) can do within their competencies and capabilities, they are trying to do. And for what does not depend on them, what is the point of blaming them for it.

- Then why does the Presidential Office focus all the negativity specifically on Klitschko, since its complaints did not arise out of thin air?

- I can assume that the central government and the Cabinet have problems executing the Resilience Plans and are now trying to shift the blame onto local authorities. To confirm this, recall how former prime minister Yuliia Svyrydenko named the sum of 216 billion hryvnias for implementing Resilience Plans across Ukraine. Later reports appeared about transfers of 10 billion, then another 8, and then everything went quiet. No final figure on the execution of that funding was provided. If the government had acted, it would first and foremost report on the transfer of the promised 216 billion. That would have been fulfillment. But since they are silent, it turns out there is no execution, and someone must be blamed. They found Klitschko.

For example, Kyiv critically depends on the operation of TEC-5 and TETs-6, which heat the left and part of the right bank. The central government, through the State Agency for Infrastructure Development, under the Resilience Plan was supposed to ensure heat for the districts previously served by Darnytska TEC-4. In reality, they finish this work only in December, in winter. So on this front the central government again lags in implementing the plans.

In addition, Vitali Klitschko made a very weighty argument that it was the government as the central authority that did not provide Kyiv with air defense. He provided data on the number of enemy targets then and now, where the figures differ by tens of times in favor of this year.

- You said the central government shifts its mistakes to local authorities. But the Presidential Office has no complaints about Kharkiv mayor Ihor Terekhov; moreover, Zelensky constantly praises him. There are also no complaints about Filatov in Dnipro or Sadovyi in Lviv. Why is that?

- It’s very simple: Terekhov and Filatov are extremely loyal to the central government. Terekhov is generally a political ally of Zelensky, and Filatov in Dnipro has developed very good relations with the heads of the military administration, Lysak and Handzha, who are appointed directly by the president. I am not saying that the mayors of Kharkiv and Dnipro are completely subordinated to them, but they occupy a very flexible position. Sadovyi is the mayor of a deeply rear-area city, so comparing him to Klitschko is incorrect.

During wartime, elections for a new mayor are impossible

- What is the root cause of their long-standing hostility?

- Volodymyr Zelensky, like all presidents, seeks to control Kyiv. How can he govern the country if he de facto has no influence over the capital? Kyiv and its head simply fall outside the vertical of a single monolithic model of power. There is nothing new here, because attacks against Klitschko began already under the first head of the Presidential Office Andrii Bohdan, continued under Andrii Yermak, and persist to this day.

Kyiv and its mayor fall out of that system. Clearly, this irritates Zelensky, so he looks for any pretexts to take the city under control and to blame Klitschko for something. The KCSA published data that the prosecutor’s office opened 1,5 thousand proceedings regarding employees of the city state administration, of which only 6 or 7 reached trial with guilty verdicts. They opened one and a half thousand, and only a few cases were confirmed. Doesn’t that indicate that proceedings are opened solely to pressure the mayor’s office and the KCSA?

- Judging by Klitschko’s speech in the Rada, he is building his own defense and in effect accused the Presidential Office and the Cabinet of failure to prepare for winter and inadequate protection of the capital. In other words, he does not intend to tolerate the accusations. What will this lead to?

- Obviously, one should not expect anything good from any conflict, since it harms the city and Kyiv residents. On the other hand, tolerating outright attacks from the central government would mean discrediting the entire institution of local self-government.

- President Zelensky hinted at possible managerial decisions regarding Kyiv. Is it possible now to remove Klitschko from the position of head of the Kyiv City State Administration, leaving him only with the elected position of mayor? Moreover, there is a precedent when in 2010 year Viktor Yanukovych deprived Leonid Chernovetskyi of that post and appointed Oleksandr Popov. Will the Presidential Office go for that?

- Despite society’s ambiguous attitude toward Chernovetskyi, that was completely illegal and unconstitutional arbitrariness by Yanukovych. At that time and still in effect is the decision of the Constitutional Court which recognized that the elected mayor of Kyiv simultaneously holds the post of head of the Kyiv City State Administration. That decision exists, no one has repealed it and it cannot be repealed. And generally, if Zelensky imitates Yanukovych, it will significantly disgrace him. If the president of a country at war repeats the steps of a fleeing president and an obvious agent of the Russian Federation, it will leave an indelible political stain on Zelensky.

- Could the Presidential Office initiate new mayoral elections?

- During wartime, elections even for local authorities are not held. This is due not only to the security requirements of martial law, but such elections would have very low legitimacy. Many people have left Kyiv abroad, many Kyiv residents are fighting, so under such conditions community voting would not be complete. On the other hand, sociological polls show that Klitschko would win those elections even if they were held by the central government.

There was no such winter preparation in past years

- How are our Western partners, who provide funds and equipment for Kyiv’s defense, reacting to these conflicts around the capital?

- So far there is no data, because this conflict became public only after Klitschko’s speech in the Verkhovna Rada. Let’s wait a few days; perhaps an appropriate reaction will appear, although I doubt it will be public. Zelensky now represents Ukraine on the international stage, so our allies will not want to spoil his image and show their voters the troubles in the country they support.

- How are our allies currently helping Kyiv directly to prepare for winter?

- Yes, there are figures. Kyivvodokanal currently has 103 generators with capacities from 15 kilowatts to 1 megawatts. Right now Kyiv is awaiting the completion of shipments of large foreign-made generation systems manufactured abroad specifically for the capital. KCSA does not disclose specific delivery dates for security reasons.

Within city energy resilience and co-financing programs, more than 6000 units of equipment have been purchased for multi-apartment buildings, including generators, inverters, and battery storage. The city’s hospitals are equipped with 480 generators. In 15 hospitals, own artesian wells have been drilled, and another 6 are currently being built. 11 hospitals already have autonomous heating from their own boiler houses, and by the end of the year there will be 21. All Kyiv educational institutions are equipped with generators, of which 285 are high capacity.

- Putting big politics and backstage disputes aside, what should Kyiv residents prepare for? Will the capital freeze, or will intense pressure force both sides to unite for the sake of saving the city?

- The question of the viability of a million-person city under constant shelling remains extremely complex. The local authorities are fulfilling their obligations under the Resilience Plan, since that includes construction of protective structures for the physical protection of TECs from debris and drones, provision of backup power, development of cogeneration, and mobile heat generation.

The central government, for its part, should have ensured the city’s air defense, which is not within the competence of local authorities. There is also a third party—the enemy: in recent months the Russians have sharply increased the intensity of their strikes. We cannot predict their further actions, although much depends on that. All our last four winters were extremely difficult, and we prepared increasingly thoroughly for each subsequent one. In previous years there were no such large-scale energy preparation and infrastructure resilience measures as we are observing now.

About Korotko pro

Oleksandr Serhiienko — director of the analytical-research center "City Institute," Candidate of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, lawyer, and a People’s Deputy of Ukraine of the 3rd convocation (formerly served as first deputy head of the Labour Party of Ukraine and was a member of the "Unity" faction). For more than 20 years he has been analyzing infrastructure, communal, and political processes in the capital. He currently acts as an independent expert on urban planning, housing and communal services, and interaction between the central government and local self-government.