The main focus is on the resilience of systems in each community, said Oleksii Kuleba during a meeting of the Headquarters for the Preparation for and Passage of the Autumn-Winter Period

A meeting of the Headquarters for the Preparation for and Passage of 2025-2026 Autumn-Winter Period was held under the chairmanship of Oleksii Kuleba, Deputy Prime Minister for the Restoration of Ukraine and Minister for Communities and Territories Development of Ukraine.

Currently, communities are gradually ceasing heat supply in accordance with weather conditions. Heating has already been terminated in Mykolaiv and Kherson regions, as well as in the cities of Dnipro, Kryvyi Rih, and Berdychiv. In Kyiv, the process of disconnecting residential buildings has begun.

During the meeting, key tasks for preparing for the coming winter were identified.

“We are going through the most difficult heating season since Ukraine’s independence. Throughout the entire season, emergency situations were being resolved. In January and February alone, we faced about 60 russian attacks on critical infrastructure, which affected heating or water supply. That is, without exaggeration—every day. Emergency crews restored heat and water to the homes of millions of Ukrainians. One of the most difficult situations was in the capital. Despite this, the system in the country withstood the pressure overall. This is the result of the joint efforts of the Government, regions, communities, and enterprises that provided people with heat and water every day. Thank you to everyone who worked 24/7 to address the consequences and restore heating networks, water supply, and electricity,” said Oleksii Kuleba, Deputy Prime Minister for the Restoration of Ukraine and Minister for Communities and Territories Development of Ukraine.

Across the country, 98.9% of residential buildings — out of more than 71,000 — and 99.9% of social sector facilities — out of 24,500 institutions — had heating.

Separately, the meeting participants addressed the settlement of natural gas payments by heat supply companies.

“Today we are facing a systemic problem — a significant portion of heat supply companies’ debts has arisen not through their own fault, but specifically due to the moratorium on tariff increases in the heat supply sector, the unreimbursed tariff differential, and household debts. Therefore, we have prepared amendments to CMU Resolution No. 812 — debts arising from the unreimbursed tariff difference should not be collected from enterprises until the state resolves this issue. Likewise, there should be no fines or penalties on such amounts,” noted Kostiantyn Kovalchuk, Deputy Minister for Communities and Territories Development of Ukraine.

The participants also discussed the implementation of comprehensive sustainability plans for regions and cities during the meeting. In particular, the discussion focused on the development of distributed generation and providing critical infrastructure enterprises with backup power. To ensure systematic oversight of these plans’ implementation, a unified monitoring system is being introduced, which will allow for weekly tracking of the status of measures being implemented in the regions.

“The first communities have begun completing this heating season, and preparations for the next heating season are already underway. The main focus is on the resilience of systems in each community.”

“In early March, Regional Resilience Plans were adopted at a meeting of the National Security and Defense Council. We will implement them at the national level and finalize the decisions. And this will serve as the foundation and guarantee not only for getting through the upcoming heating season, but also for the development of the housing and utilities sector for years to come,” emphasized Oleksii Kuleba.

Following the meeting, local authorities were recommended to conclude the heating season taking weather conditions into account and to begin preparations for the 2026/2027 fall-winter period.

In total, 145,000 residential buildings were prepared for the start of this heating season, including over 71,000 with centralized heating, nearly 25,000 social service facilities, over 17,000 boiler rooms, and approximately 16,000 kilometers of heating networks.