STORY: "Any attempt to damage those facilities will have a terrible impact on the capacity to heat those cities," Antonio Vitorino, director general of the International Organisation of Migration (IOM) told a group of reporters in Kyiv.

"We are making all efforts to assist the population in preparing for the winter but we need electricity, and that depends on state services to (restore) a working electricity system," said Vitorino, who met Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Monday (September 12).

The IOM's top priority this winter in Ukraine is ensuring the access of an estimated 6.9 million internally displaced people to heating, warm clothes and food, Vitorino said.