Anastasia Liana has not been by her house for days, a small Soviet-era apartment on the left bank of the Dnieper River that runs through Kiev. To enter the kitchen, he removes a piece of plastic that he installed under the door frame to try to retain heat. The windows are also sealed with silicone, but inside the thermometer mark alone 7 degrees. “And it’s noon,” he says, frowning. The heating It has not worked for more than a month and there is no electricity. All he has to keep his family warm is two gas camping stoves and a tiny biofuel stove. “We were happy in this house, we like the neighborhood and we have friends, but they forced us to leave,” laments this 35-year-old translator and mother of two small children.
Liana has ended up putting herself in the way. Two weeks ago he took his family to his parents’ house in search of a living conditions moderately bearable. “We couldn’t take it anymore psychologically. With so many layers of clothes on top of us, the children had stopped playing. And the tension caused many fights with my husband. The children don’t deserve this,” she points out with a serious expression. Russian attacks against Ukrainian energy infrastructure have been a constant since the beginning of the invasion, but this year their consequences have worsened as they coincide with one of the coldest winters of recent years.
This Wednesday the outside temperature He was around in the morning 15 degrees below zero. A hand’s worth of snow covers the entire city. Ice floes stick out here and there like knives. With thousands of homes without heat and just two hours of electricity a day in part of the city, Putin has once again frozen the existence of millions of Ukrainians. “Russia tries to destroy our morale imposing some miserable living conditions. they want break our spirit to give up, but they won’t,” says Andriy Artsybashev, a 27-year-old English teacher.
“Invincibility Points”
Artsybashev spent the morning giving online classes from one of the humanitarian assistance centers installed in front of their apartment block, large heated tents, electricity to charge devices, games for children and hot infusions to catch their breath. “Invincibility Points” they call them. “You can’t stay at my house and to make matters worse, my outlets have burned out due to voltage fluctuations. I come down here for a few hours to charge the devices and teach classes,” he says. Nearby, a man is dozing on a bench and an old woman is browsing the phone protected from the cold.
One of the ‘Invincibility Points’ in the Kiev neighborhood of Razhytskyi, on the left bank of the Dnieper. / Ricardo Mir from France
At night he sleeps dressed under the blankets and, when the current returns, he curls up between hot water bottles. Others have even installed tents inside their apartments. Or before it gets dark they seek refuge in a friend’s house with heating. It is so cold outside that the ink in the pens freezes and there is no way for them to work. At least 10 Kievites have died in recent weeks from hypothermia and almost 1,500 have had to be hospitalized.
The energy blackout is not widespread. It goes through neighborhoods. Some neighborhoods have recently recovered central heating gas and have plenty of daylight hours, but in others extreme conditions persist. Particularly in the left bank of the Dnieper. two weeks ago Russia severely damaged with ballistic missiles the Darnytsia cogeneration plantwhich supplied heating and electricity to 300,000 homes in this part of the capital.
war crimes
“This is not a military objective,” the deputy prime minister said then, Oleksiy Kulebaafter describing the bombing as a war crime. “It was a deliberate attack in the middle of severe frost, when heating is a matter of basic survival for the population.” The International Organization of Migration has warned that the energy crisis could displace 325,000 Ukrainians in the coming months. “After four years of war, resilience alone is not enough to sustain families through another winter of blackouts and freezing temperatures,” the UN agency said.
In this part of the city Dozens of schools and nurseries have been closed for weeks because of the blackout. Despair is palpable on the street, although almost no one seems willing to give in to the invader. “There are not enough jobs, there is not enough money, the schools are closed and the children have nothing to do. With so many men in the Army, many women are alone. “We only have us,” Maria Farinets says in a litany in front of a hot coffee and a group of neighbors. “Putin wants to confront the rich and the poor, those who can get warm and those who can’t, but for us he can go to hell.”
Maria Farinets, a resident of kyiv affected by the energy blackout. / Ricardo Mir from France
For the oldest, surely those who are having it worst, disbelief continues to be the norm. “We always consider ourselves brothers, I never thought Russia would go to these extremes,” concedes Tetiana Melnick, a 71-year-old retired engineer. Their daughters went away Germany after the invasion and her husband died last year. She has been left alone like a lily fallen on the winter snow. “At home I stay warm and drink a lot of hot tea. I barely use the electricity when it comes on because I know there are families with children who need it more than me,” he says in one of those “points of invincibility”, points where Ukrainian survival is perpetuated.
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