Kyiv Mayor Calls Zelensky's Criticism 'Manipulation'

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky criticized Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko on Friday over prolonged water and electricity outages caused by Russian attacks, stating that city-level preparation had failed. Zelensky said the outages resulted from unfulfilled decisions at the city level regarding heating season preparation and Russia's operation against Ukraine's energy system. He added that the government discussed deploying additional repair crews with energy companies. Klitschko responded by accusing the central government of manipulation and failing to help the capital, claiming it is "actually destroying" Kyiv. He also noted Ukraine has a single interconnected energy system, so outages cannot be blamed on one city.