GENICHESK, December 16. /TASS/. Kherson is experiencing a severe lack of electricity and a blackout has engulfed the city, Alexander Malkevich, a member of Russia’s Civic Chamber and freelance adviser to the region’s governor, told TASS on Friday.

"Kherson is facing an enormous problem with electricity. There is a city-wide blackout in Kherson and nobody from among Ukrainian officials is going to solve the problem. The population there is on their own," the politician emphasized.

Kherson and the Kherson Region’s areas on the right bank of the Dnieper River have been under the control of Ukrainian troops since early November. On Thursday, large-scale emergency outages were reported in Ukraine due to heavy damage done to the country’s power infrastructure. Ukrainian Prime Minister Denis Shmygal reported later that almost half of the country’s grid system was out of service, and warned that restrictions on the use of electricity would remain in force throughout the winter.

On November 9, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu ordered that Russian troops be pulled from the right bank of the Dnieper River back to the left bank based on a proposal from Army General Sergey Surovikin, chief of the Russian military operation in Ukraine. Surovikin pointed out that Russian troops were successfully thwarting Ukrainian attacks and one of the reasons for withdrawing was the risk that if areas downstream from the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant got flooded, the Russian forces would be isolated. According to him, all civilians who wanted to leave the area — over 115,000 people — have been relocated from the right bank.