When an official says "the resilience plan accumulated 10 billion hryvnias," it sounds like a report for the sake of a report. But behind the figures Vitali Klitschko presented at the National Security and Defense Council meeting lies concrete arithmetic: how many megawatts of heat Kyiv will manage to replace before the frost strikes, and how many it won't.
2.1 gigawatts — how much is that?
The capital needs to replace thermal power plants with a capacity of 2.1 GW — the amount of heat and electricity produced by facilities that Russian missiles have been striking for years. It's roughly like providing heating to an average European city from scratch while simultaneously rebuilding it. According to Klitschko, the city has already contracted equipment and begun work on facilities with capacity exceeding 1,000 MW — slightly less than half. Another 564 MW is covered by the Recovery Agency. Together, this is almost the entire required capacity, but "contracted" and "operational" are not synonyms: the equipment still needs to be delivered, installed, and launched.
Where the money is and where the promises are
Of the announced 10 billion hryvnias, 5.2 billion are already raised funds, including international aid and support from the President's Office. The city plans to secure the rest through credit and budget reallocation. In other words, half the sum exists in reality, half is in planning. The largest expense item is 6.6 billion hryvnias for engineering and technical protection of second-level energy facilities, and this is precisely where the highest progress has been reported: 65% of work is complete.
What this means for a specific apartment
Besides large-scale energy infrastructure, there is a practical level: 800 million hryvnias went to repair electrical equipment in residential buildings, and over 2,000 buildings have already completed energy resilience measures using almost 500 million hryvnias. DTEK is simultaneously strengthening substations at 120 facilities. For residents, this means the difference between "the lights went out for an hour" and "the lights went out for a week" during a massive bombardment.
On Kyiv's scale, just replacing the thermal power plants means 2.1 GW. Based on a 50/50 ratio, the city has contracted equipment and begun work at facilities with total capacity exceeding 1,000 MW
The weak point in the report
Klitschko himself acknowledged that backup heat supply is the most difficult part of the plan. This makes sense: replacing thermal power plants requires not just money but also time for logistics of equipment, which often comes from abroad, and installation, which cannot be accelerated indefinitely. If Russia continues striking energy facilities in autumn as it did last winter, the 65% completion rate may prove insufficient — not due to lack of planning, but because of the physical impossibility of rebuilding faster than destruction occurs.
The question for the next two months is simple: will the city manage to translate the contracted megawatts from paper into concrete and wires before the first serious frosts arrive, or will the heating season once again become a test of Kyiv residents' resilience.
