Victims of Putin’s energy war in Kyiv: ‘This is the hardest period I have ever lived through’

Viktor Nevunniy, 70, returns home after doing some shopping. He has a fever of 39 degrees Celsius and heads straight for the elevator. It’s not working; there’s a power outage. He lives on the 16th floor, the top floor of a building on Valtynska Street in Kyiv. He has to wait and takes shelter in the lobby, where Arkadi, the concierge, is having lunch — sardines and bread — next to a couple of radiators connected to a generator. Outside it’s minus seven degrees Celsius and snow is falling. A welcome relief compared to the -20ºC of the past few days, which have returned this week in the harshest winter of the four years of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Moscow struck again early last Saturday at the battered infrastructure of DTEK, Ukraine’s largest energy company, the 10th attack since October. There have been over 220 strikes on its facilities since the start of the war in February 2022. For residents of Kyiv, this means having between an hour and a half and two hours of electricity a day. Nevunniy, a retired colonel, says “they are trying to freeze the Ukrainians, and nobody is doing anything to stop Putin.”

The building, with 158 apartments, is getting a few more hours of electricity. The authorities have been lenient with them because three days earlier, in another major attack, Russia destroyed the Darnytsia thermal power plant, which provided them with a minimal amount of heating. They have already said goodbye to it — there are more than 1,400 apartment buildings in Kyiv in the same situation, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy — for the rest of the winter. The same goes for hot water, which has been absent for two months in this block on the eastern bank of the Dnipro River.

When the electricity finally returns, Colonel Nevunniy takes the elevator up to his apartment. Upon reaching his landing, he points to a frozen floor. Inside, he gives a tour of daily life in the cold and without basic supplies. In the entryway, his most valuable possessions are packed in several bags at the foot of a bicycle, in case he and his wife need to make a hasty escape. In the living room, a small heater is pointed at the cage containing his three parakeets. In the kitchen, he shows a small stove with a gas canister for cooking during power outages. Next to the bathroom, a bucket of water sits for when there isn’t even cold water.

The panoramic view of the city from his kitchen is breathtaking. In every sense: “From here you can see all the drones and it’s quite scary. It feels like they’re practically brushing against your head.”

Natalia Lapchik, a 67-year-old social worker, lives on the 11th floor. She arrives carrying two bags, but she’s not bothered by having to take the stairs if the elevator isn’t working. Once, a power outage caught her in the elevator. She’s a swimmer and in good shape, she says, and climbing the stairs is good exercise. She’s also quite stoic. It’s 2°C in her apartment, and despite the allowance they have to use a little more electricity, she doesn’t turn on the radiators to conserve energy: “There’s a critical situation, and they’re asking us not to waste it.” “Sleeping in the cold is good for your health; it’s also great for your skin,” she jokes.

The hardest part for her is when they go hours without any electricity. “With electricity you can cook, heat water, make yourself something hot. You can use a computer and work in the kitchen,” says Lapchik, whose son is on the front lines. She has been washing her hair in sections for two months. Always separately, “of course.” “Every two weeks I go to the sauna; it’s very good for your health,” she adds.

“People adapt; Ukrainians don’t break,” Lapchik proudly states. In the building these past few months, they’ve been helping each other more; a stronger sense of community has developed. “I’ll endure whatever it takes to keep our nation free and dignified.”

Nevertheless, she acknowledges: “This is the hardest period I have ever lived through; I never thought I would find myself like this. I couldn’t imagine that the Russians were capable of such cruelty.” In Ukraine this winter, the term Kholodomor (death by cold) resonates, coined in memory of the great famine of 1932 and 1933, the Holodomor (death by starvation), ordered by Stalin that killed between three and seven million people.

On the third floor lives another retired colonel, 69-year-old Viktor Lazebnyk, with his 62-year-old librarian wife. It’s 6°C in their home. “My wife doesn’t get out of bed. As soon as she gets home from the library, where it’s 3°C, she gets under several layers of blankets.”

Lazebnyk is most worried about his eight-year-old cat, Busya. “We try to keep her as warm as possible. If her food is cold, she won’t eat it, and we warm it up a little when there’s electricity. At night, she gets in bed with us, and we put her close to our bodies.” He seems genuinely concerned for his pet. “I’m afraid she’ll get sick. If I get ill, I know what to do and what pills to take, but her…”

Despite the difficulties, he’s fortunate because he has a water heater and doesn’t depend on the central heating plants that supply the rest of the neighborhood. Most people don’t have one because the electrical wiring is poor and would need replacing sooner. They also don’t have gas boilers because, for safety reasons, they’re prohibited in buildings taller than nine stories.

Colonel Lazebnyk sees no end to the war — “we’ve been at it for 12 years and it will surely continue for several more” — nor does he have any military tricks against the cold. “The only thing that works is a hot radiator.”

In the building’s basement, there’s a packed secondhand shop. Ludmyla, the shop assistant, sits motionless, huddled under a blanket, pressed against an old electric radiator powered by a battery. On the counter, she has a lit candle that gives off little light and even less heat, but does offer a faint illusion of warmth. Ludmyla doesn’t want to give her last name. Nor does she want her picture taken. Her son and brother are in the army. She fears for them and for what might happen, because war is unpredictable.

The 60-year-old woman is bundled up in her coat, scarf, the hood of a fleece sweatshirt, and mittens. She doesn’t know what the temperature is in the shop, but she opens her mouth and steam comes out: “Is this normal?”

At home, where she lives with her daughter-in-law and granddaughter, the same thing happens. Her nose gets cold and damp within minutes. Her feet too. She never manages to warm up. “I’m wearing several layers on top, all very thick, and two pairs of trousers, also very thick. Look, touch them.” And indeed they are.

Svetlana, a 56-year-old customer who lives nearby and came in to look at coats for her granddaughters, says that it’s 6°C in her apartment, “but in some parts of the building it doesn’t even get above 2°C and we don’t have hot water.” Her tricks: using gas, leaving the oven on to warm the room, electric blankets when there’s power, and wearing lots of clothes. “The worst part is that my hands are freezing. It’s really hard to do anything.”

Ludmyla sleeps in thick pajamas. She jumps out from under the covers without thinking because the nights are rough. She has insomnia. In the early hours, she hears the drones. She worries about her son and brother on the Kharkiv front. “Actually, I’m longing for daylight,” she says. In the morning, she, her daughter-in-law, and her granddaughter each take a chopped clove of garlic. “That way it doesn’t smell.” They swallow it whole with a glass of water, like pills, to avoid getting sick. They also eat a lot of salo, a type of Ukrainian bacon.

That it’s the worst winter of the war doesn’t bother her too much, for her own sake. “But it hurts me deeply for my granddaughter; she has anxiety attacks because of the attacks.” Despite the peace negotiations, she doesn’t believe the conflict will end soon either. But she endures, as everyone else does, with her sights set on spring.

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