Ukrenergo stabilizes power supply to Kiev, Ukraine's central regions

MOSCOW. Oct 13 (Interfax) - The Ukrenergo national energy company has stabilized power supply to Kiev and Ukraine's central regions, but calls on residents to continue to minimize their power consumption in the morning and in the evening in order to avoid power outages.

"Ukrenergo has stabilized power supply to Kiev and the central regions of Ukraine. There is a chance that this evening we will not have to impose consumption restrictions in these regions," Ukrainian media outlets quoted the company as saying in a social media post.

Outages can be avoided if power consumption is minimized in the evening and in the morning, it said.

"We ask all consumers to pursue a careful approach to power consumption: turn off all unnecessary electric appliances in the morning and in the evening when power consumption is at its maximum. It will help reduce the burden on the grid and simplify the operations of the energy sector," Ukrenergo said.

However, emergency blackout schedules currently remain in force in the Kharkov, Sumy and Poltava regions, the company said.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian media quoted the State Service of Special Communications and Information Protection of Ukraine as saying in a social media post on Thursday that Ukrainian operators and providers, being helped by the National Center of the Operations and Technology Directorate, have promptly restored mobile phone access in the country's populated localities where it was disrupted on October 10 and October 11.

"Mobile connection disruptions affected up to 18% of users of telecoms networks. Meanwhile, less than 2% of users could encounter possible problems with connection on October 12," the service said.

The majority of cell towers and switching stations have their own internal power supply.

The service also called on all citizens to make their contribution to the stable functioning of mobile phone services in Ukraine and not to overload them.

"We ask you to limit the use of mobile traffic: disable automatic download of media files in messengers, read texts instead of watching videos or at least reduce video streaming resolution. If your mobile operator is not available, we advise you to use national roaming," it said.

Furthermore, users in a number of regions may have difficulty accessing fixed Internet, which is also due to the damage inflicted on the networks.