On the morning of October 29, power was restored to all consumers in Konotop (Sumy region). Konotop had been without power for 5 days — a situation that pro-Russian Telegram channels used for a disinformation campaign against the authorities.
“Ukrenergo” reported on the stabilization of the situation in the city .
Currently, electricity is supplied to residents in turn. The order of its supply is regulated by energy professionals.
The day before, the Konotop Mayor Artem Semenikhin told Apostrophe that as a result of Russian strikes on the night of October 24, the cityʼs energy facilities were completely destroyed and beyond repair.
According to him, the only thing that was possible was to sometimes connect the hospital or the water utility at night, while the rest of the city was without electricity.
Due to the power problems in Konotop, anonymous Telegram channels became more active. Between October 28 and 29, they actively manipulated information and tried to present the long power outage in Konotop as the first sign of the approaching “black winter”. According to Babel’s analysis, these posts received approximately 262 000 views.
These channels blamed the situation in the city on President Volodymyr Zelensky’s “escalation adventure” rather than the Russian strikes that damaged the city’s energy infrastructure. The reports claimed that many other cities were already in a similar situation, and predicted a humanitarian catastrophe and a nationwide “domino” effect in the winter if the war continued and the parties did not sign a peace agreement soon.
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