‘Everything is frozen’: bitter winter drags on for Kyiv residents as Russia wipes out power | Ukraine
NAtalya Pavlovna watched her two-year-old son Danylo playing with Lego. “We’re taking a break from the cold,” he said as the children painted in the warm tent. Adults sipped their tea and chatted while their phones charged. The emergency facility is located in the Troieschina district of Kiev, on the left bank of the Dnipro River. It was -18 degrees outside. There was bright sunshine and snow.
Natalya said, “Russia is trying to break us. This is a deliberate genocide against the Ukrainian people. Putin wants us to surrender and thus give up the Donbas region.” “Kiev used to not feel like a front-line city. Now it does. People are dying of cold in their homes in the 21st century. The aim is to get us away from there and create a new refugee crisis for Europe.”
His apartment is in one of 2,600 buildings in the Ukrainian capital that currently have no electricity or heating. The Kremlin has been bombing the country’s energy infrastructure since the beginning of its full-scale invasion nearly four years ago; It targets substations, thermal power plants and rescue workers struggling to save the electricity grid from multiple attacks.
In recent weeks, Russia has overwhelmed Kiev’s air defenses and caused further damage, coinciding with one of the coldest, harshest winters in decades. Ballistic missiles destroyed the Darnytska combined heat and power plant, which fed much of Dnipro’s left bank. There are frequent blackouts across the capital, limiting electricity supply to three or four hours a day.
Natalya said the impact of Vladimir Putin’s air raid was reminiscent of the Stalin-engineered famine in Soviet Ukraine in 1932-33 that killed millions. Ukrainian words are similar – holodomor (destruction through starvation) and kholodomor (death from cold). “Putin wants to do to Kiev what he did to Mariupol,” she said, adding that many of those shivering in the capital had fled to fight elsewhere.
“There’s been a huge impact on families and people with children,” said Toby Fricker, a spokesman for Unicef, which donated the warming tent. In Kiev, 45 percent of schools are closed due to lack of central heating. “Education has been disrupted. Children and young people are experiencing social isolation. They are missing normal life,” Fricker said.
Some mothers shared tips on cheap accommodation abroad in chat groups, in Bulgaria, Egypt and Greece. Others decided to stay there. Yuliia, a mother of six-year-old twins, said: “I see reasons to leave and stay. We are with my family right now. If I leave, I will lose them.” “We don’t know how long this situation will last. It’s cold. We’re sleeping with our hats on.”
Residents have used ingenious hacks to make their homes a little cozier. They bought power banks, camping equipment, gas cylinders and generators and found a booming presence outside offices and shops on the icy streets of Kiev. Some people Heat bricks and rocks on gas stoves. Others pitched tents inside their living rooms. Cafes are a popular refuge. Ukraine’s state emergency service set up bed shelters.
Artist Julia Po showed her house on the seventh floor in the Dniprovskyi district of Kiev. With a torch in hand, he led the way towards a dark staircase. Without electricity, the lights and elevator do not work; frozen water pipes burst two weeks ago, causing flooding; A cold wind blew through the slatted panels. “The building dates from the 70s and the Soviet era. It is poorly designed and cannot cope with that,” he said.
Po had insulated his front door with bubble wrap. Walls, windows and a ficus houseplant were also wrapped to reduce drafts. He sleeps under two blankets and wears thermal underwear and a hoodie. “It’s very cold underground. When you wake up in the morning, you can feel your kidneys. My electric kettle cracked. I haven’t washed my hair for two weeks,” he said.
Her cat, named after Radiohead singer Thom Yorke, sleeps under a blanket in a closet. Po, originally from Russian-occupied Crimea, said he felt dispossessed. “It’s like someone stole my house. The atmosphere is the same as in 2022. I went through many stages, from depression-aggression to acceptance and, to some extent, irony. It’s not nice, but what can you do? Unfortunately, there is war in our country. This is our reality.”
The artist, who has a gas stove and combi boiler, admitted that he is in a better situation than some of his neighbors. The cuts have hit retirees hard, who are often too strapped to buy extra equipment. Some were trapped in their apartments. There are at least 10 people died of hypothermia and 1,469 people were hospitalized. Russia’s attacks on energy facilities have always continued. Strike in Kiev on Thursday and the weathered southern city of Odessa.
Maxim TimchenkoThe head of energy provider DTEK said Moscow destroyed 80% of Ukraine’s electricity generation capacity. “We are not talking about the energy crisis. This is a humanitarian and national crisis. As a country, we are in survival mode,” he said. He added that only one of the company’s five power plants is currently connected to the power grid, and repairs are difficult because “everything is frozen.”
Timchenko said Ukraine needs urgent international assistance. This requires additional air defense, ammunition and energy ceasefires, he said; This was something Moscow briefly agreed to at Donald Trump’s request, before resuming bombing a few days later. “Kiev has become the main target. We have lost all sources of electricity generation in the city. We are doing everything we can to keep the economy alive,” Tymchenko said.
DTEK engineer Oleh Yaruta said the capital’s power grid was overloaded. Burns occurred because people used electric heaters and boilers to stay warm. He was repairing the underground electrical cable. He jumped through a hole and pulled out an iPad. There was a long list of pending repairs resulting from outages in the capital. What did he think of the Russians? “They’re devils and orcs. They’re bombing us because they can’t capture us,” he replied.
Earlier this week, power was restored to some buildings on the left bank and the lights were back on for a few hours. Natasha Naboka said she shared a bed with her 10-year-old daughter Sofia and their Yorkshire terrier Bonya in January. “We were together under a blanket. Bonya was wearing a jacket. When I woke up, my nose was frozen. It was 4-5 degrees inside the apartment.” He added: “Sofiia’s school was closed. It was an adventure for her.”
Without a working refrigerator, Naboka leaves food on her fifth-floor balcony. She washed her clothes by hand and put them in a backpack to dry at her workplace, a beauty salon in central Kiev, where the power situation was better. He said that during the air raids, he and Sofia moved into the corridor, hiding between two walls. Her husband, a military man, lives in the Kharkiv region, another region badly affected by power outages.
Some Kyiv residents criticized city officials for not maintaining infrastructure. Volodymyr Zelenskyy pointed to the city’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko. accuse him of doing too little. But Naboka said the Russians were to blame. “They thought they could take over Ukraine very quickly. They couldn’t. Instead Putin is trying to destroy us.” He added: “This is all about one man’s jealousy and unhealthy ambition.”
