MOSCOW, December 5. /TASS/. Major Ukrainian cities, including Kiev, may face a collapse of the heating system similar to what is happening in Krivoy Rog in the Dnepropetrovsk Region, Oleg Popenko, head of the association of utility consumers, said.

"This happens when nobody changes pipes for decades. Finally, the time comes and they burst in many places at once. Krivoy Rog has already faced problems with heating. However, this year they [the Ukrainian authorities] did nothing," the Ukrainian service of the BBC quoted him as saying.

A similar problem may occur in the cities of Kiev, Kharkov, Lvov, Sumy, Ukrainian-controlled Kherson, and Kropivnitsky (formerly Kirovograd), as Ukraine lacks a state policy for authorities to control the management of the municipal power system, Popenko pointed out. "In many district centers, heating networks remained unrepaired because neither the local budget nor the heating utilities and suppliers had funds for this," the expert added.

Earlier on November 22, the Ministry for Communities and Territories Development of Ukraine announced serious problems with heating in Krivoy Rog - roughly 110,000 of the city's residents remained without heat. The local Internet portal Pervy Krivorozhsky said that the previous heating season in the city also suffered from constant large-scale breakdowns of the water network, and most residents had to wait for long periods for heat. Some of the pipelines were not restored before the start of the new heating period, the portal added.

On November 24, the local enterprise Kryvorozhskaya Teplotsentral [heating plant of Krivoy Rog] reported that the city still had troubles with heating, in particular, because mobilization activities "caused staffing shortages." This problem also affected other contracting organizations involved in the repair work. Among other reasons for the critical situation, the enterprise named the arrest of the company's accounts due to multimillion debts and damage to heating networks.

Earlier, complaints about the shortage of communal workers due to mobilization came from other Ukrainian cities.