MOSCOW, April 20. /TASS/. The local authorities in the Ukrainian city of Nikolayev have stopped social payments, water supplies have been cut off, public utilities do not provide services, so there is a threat of an epidemic disaster, Colonel-General Mikhail Mizintsev, chief of Russia’s National Defense Management Center, said on Wednesday.

"The utility service providers are not operating. The central water supply is cut off, so people are forced to get water from any available source, including unchecked ones (rivers, ponds, abandoned wells). Unless the local authorities take immediate measures to restore the city’s critical systems, Nikolayev will be in the area of an epidemiological disaster," said Mizintsev, who heads the Russian Joint Coordination Headquarters for Humanitarian Response in Ukraine.

The colonel-general said that against a backdrop of the dire humanitarian situation, social payments to the population have been stopped, humanitarian aid is being stolen by the local government to go to the shelves of stores and pharmacies at inflated prices.