On March 11, the Minister of Internal Affairs Ihor Klymenko spoke with journalists. Babel gathered key points from the conversation.
Border shelling
On the morning of March 11, the occupiers attacked the district police department in Shostka (Sumy region) with a drone. 22 employees were injured, the building was destroyed.
In the Dnipropetrovsk region, the Russians are constantly shelling Nikopol, less than 10 kilometers from the city to the launch site of the enemy drones. There is information that the Russians are also training there to launch drones during basic general military training, on civilians.
The Russians are destroying everything within 20 kilometers [of the border or front line]. The border settlements are almost completely destroyed. They are destroying all administrative buildings so that the authorities cannot work stably.
On the weekend of March 7-8, the State Emergency Service lost seven units of transport during repeated strikes, when the Russians attacked rescue workers who were dealing with the consequences of previous attacks.
Developing a civil protection system and sharing experience
In the last six months, the Ministry of Internal Affairs has received many requests from European countries that are interested in the survival and protection system for critical infrastructure facilities. They are studying this in depth, and Ukraine is providing this assistance. They want to understand how they can deploy a civil protection system.
The civil defense system in Ukraine was completely destroyed. In the last six months, it has been restored in the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine and in particular in the State Emergency Service.
Ukraine now has more remote firefighting robots than any other country in Europe. Ukraine received a large number of such robots from the French and is now purchasing Ukrainian-made robots as well.
Several units have been created in the State Emergency Service:
- units of climbers — there are currently 1 550 of them. Two of them died during the winter: one in warehouses in Yahotyn (Kyiv region), and the other collapsed during work at TPP-6 in Kyiv;
- the “Delta” special forces unit, which is deployed at any dangerous points;
- a special unit of divers trained by the French. This winter, some TPPs held up, in part, thanks to these divers, who, in an area of great risk to their lives, eliminated the holes;
- energy departments. They constantly heated the pipes of large water mains at the TPP so that the water would not freeze while the energy workers were working.
Thanks to the generators, the State Emergency Service managed to maintain 18 transformer substations, which provided heat and electricity to more than 100 residential buildings, three hospitals, and other facilities in Kyiv.
Terrorist attacks
The Ministry of Internal Affairs analyzed the organization of the terrorist attack in Lviv on the night of February 22. Now, for some responses, the police and the State Emergency Service will arrive 2-5 minutes later — to where there are signals of a terrorist threat.
They also conducted training for operators of 101, 102, and 112. During martial law, a ban was imposed on calling 112 from abroad. If the call comes from another city or region, it is immediately taken into account (it is defined as a “red level”). This also happens if the operator has reason to believe that the applicant is providing unreliable information.
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