Ukrainians are used to a few days a year without hot water as sizzling summer temperatures give the nation’s state-run utilities a chance to fix leaky pipes. This year, the stoppages have stretched into months.
“It’s like living in the middle ages,” said Olga Tymofeyshyna, a 25-year-old bank worker from Kamyanets-Podilsky, about 50 miles from the border with Moldova. “Because of the government’s inability to pay its bills we’re suffering from a lack of basic services. We’re very angry.”
In addition to hot-water shortages, street cleaners in the western town of Stryi threatened to block one of the former Soviet republic’s busiest highways this month, complaining they hadn’t been paid since April. In nearby Lviv, Ukraine’s seventh-biggest city, the treasury has blocked cash for school renovations, including money donated by parents.
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