Svitlana Zinovieva wiped icy condensation from her livingroom window and pointed to a smokestack rising from a central boiler heating her apartment block. There, in the distance, she had seen a Russian missile streak in and explode a few days before.
“It was like fireworks,” she said. “But I knew it would soon be cold.”
Not long after, the bitter chill of the coldest winter in a decade in Kyiv was seeping into her apartment. Zinovieva quickly adopted new routines, like countless other Ukrainians coping with Russia’s unrelenting assaults on their country’s heating and electrical systems.
With the power out and her refrigerator useless, a glassed-in balcony became her freezer as inside temperatures fell. Before bed, Zinovieva (73), a retired cinematographer, warmed water on a stove to fill empty wine bottles. She placed them inside a tent pitched on her bed. Then she climbed inside, warm at last.
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“It’s really very cosy,” she said of the indoor tent.
Ukrainians have watched breakthroughs and setbacks on the battlefield, slept in basements, mourned their dead and lamented the loss of the United States as a reliable ally. They are now approaching the fourth anniversary of Russia’s all-out invasion bundled up in their homes in jumpers, long underwear and multiple pairs of socks.
Russia’s waves of strikes with missiles and exploding drones on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure are not just inducing discomfort. They are also aimed at crippling the Ukrainian economy and demoralising the population, including by sowing internal divisions. They also amplify pressure on Ukraine during peace talks brokered by the Trump administration.
The Kremlin first tried to freeze Ukraine into submission in 2006 and 2010 by shutting natural gas shipments in winter. While the dispute was ostensibly over-pricing, the intention was to pressure the western-leaning government at the time.
Moscow tried again with missile attacks during the first three winters after its invasion in February 2022.
This year, a flurry of strikes that began on January 4th have finally frozen Kyiv.
On Monday, after the latest barrages, about 1,400 apartment buildings in Kyiv were without heat, said Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy. Overnight temperatures on Monday dropped to minus 20 degrees. At one point in January, heating was out for about half of the city’s population of three million, according to the mayor, Vitali Klitschko.
The Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine, a branch of the United Nations investigating rights abuses, deemed previous Russian attacks on heating and electrical plants to be war crimes. The International Criminal Court has indicted a former Russian defence minister and three generals for targeting civilian infrastructure.
Though Kyiv residents live in a sprawling, modern city, the experience for those in the most affected buildings is not far from camping in an icebound urban wilderness. Residents fend for themselves to find heat, electricity and water.
Some apartments have been without those necessities for weeks. In most neighbourhoods, one or another utility blinks out for hours or days before being restored.
In a dozen interviews in their darkened apartments, some Kyiv residents remained defiant, saying they would endure any hardships necessary to avoid capitulation to Moscow. For others, the mood toward Ukraine’s own leadership has soured.
Natalia Kazak (76) had no light, heat or working stove. She sat shrouded in jumpers to stay warm.
She relies on the kindness of neighbours who bring warm food and hot water for tea. When asked how she was doing, she began to sob.
“I didn’t think I would have an old age like this,” she said. “Please don’t forget about us.”
Adaptations abound. Tetiana Keleinikova (72) wakes up at 1am to do some baking in her electric oven. She has power only overnight, for a few hours.
Her building has no elevator, so she cannot go down to the basement during air-raid alerts. Instead, she sits in a corridor and keeps watch, allowing her grandchildren to sleep.
“Out the window, I see them shooting,” she said of the night-time duels between anti-aircraft fire and incoming missiles and drones. “I hear the rockets fly over. I sit quietly. The children sleep and I am on guard.”
As Ukrainian officials hold talks with Russian and US delegations over a negotiated end to the war, she says: “We are hoping for it every day.”
Lidia Prylypkova (87) recalled living in a basement as a young girl during the second World War. She was offended, she said, that Russia now claimed the victory over Nazi Germany as its own.
“Think how many Ukrainians also fought” in that war, she said. Ukraine should now fight on against Russia, she insisted.
“Don’t stop,” she said, hobbling about her freezing apartment in slippers and layers of gowns. “Don’t retreat from even one town. They don’t deserve it.”
Volodymyr Matveyev (68), a retired adviser to a Ukrainian government minister, warms his 99-year-old father by placing hot water bottles in the older man’s bed. Yes, he said, Russia was to blame for blowing up power plants. But Zelenskiy, he said, was to blame for failing to defend them.
“We understand it’s a war and all that,” Matveyev said. “But bureaucrats are corrupt and people don’t want to work. If you don’t understand that, you don’t understand anything about this country.”
As cold gripped the city, Zelenskiy blamed the mayor, Klitschko, a long-time political rival, for failing to prepare backup heat and power. Klitschko said the city was installing three power generators in parks
Not everyone was enduring the cold quietly. In a parking lot and on the ice of the frozen Dnieper river over the weekend, young people twirled, stomped and shouted, putting on a show in defiance of the frigid conditions with an outdoor rave.
“This is better than sitting at home and crying, so to speak,” said Anastasia Bychkovska (28), who came to dance with a colleague from the nail salon where she works.
One partygoer turned up in a penguin suit. Another, Ella Ponomorenko, said: “War takes away life.”
“It’s very important to raise spirits so people want to keep living,” she added.
Zinovieva was keeping a close eye on the smokestack visible from her window. Steam would mean good news.
Residents of her building had used an online chat to organise efforts to pour stove-heated water down bathtub drains every hour, including overnight, lest the pipes burst.
Repair crews had come from all over the country and worked on the plant around the clock. On Saturday, steam appeared. It was back in business.
“I cross my fingers,” Zinovieva said. “And I watch that smokestack.” – This article originally appeared in The New York Times
