CNN
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Residents of the southern Russian city of Krasnodar held a rare protest on Saturday over power outages and water supply disruptions caused by a blackout amid record high temperatures.

Angry residents gathered on the streets outside residential buildings chanting “Give me light” after power outages lasted for days, videos on social media showed.

Work is underway to repair the accident and residents are being provided with drinking water, the city’s mayor, Evgeny Naumov, said on Saturday. “We all need to remain calm and understand what is happening, although this is not easy,” he said in a Telegram message.

The power outage came as the city is experiencing unusually high temperatures, with a daily record breaking on Friday for the fourth day in a row, Russian state news agency TASS reported. The maximum temperature on Friday was 39 degrees Celsius, TASS reported.

Krasnodar Governor Veniamin Kondratyev said Saturday that “abnormal heat,” the lack of adequate capacity during peak load periods and the operation of the Rostov nuclear power plant were among the factors contributing to the outage. One of the units of the Rostov nuclear power plant, the largest in the region, was temporarily shut down earlier this week due to a technical malfunction.

“There has been abnormal heat in the Krasnodar region for a week. The load on the energy system is colossal,” Governor Kondratyev said. “I know and understand all the indignation of residents over the power outage.”

He said he is “in constant contact” with energy workers and that “where possible, emergency services are resolving outages as quickly as possible.” Kondratyev said the city’s mayor is currently in the area hardest hit and is “constantly reporting on the situation.”

Public protests are very rare in Russia, especially after Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The government has introduced wartime censorship laws that could lead to severe penalties, including prison sentences, for discrediting the military.