‘Everything is frozen’: bitter winter drags on for Kyiv residents as Russia wipes out power

Julia Po wraps her apartment plants in bubble wrap.Natalya Pavlovna watched her two-year-old son, Danylo, play with Lego. “We are taking a break from the cold,” she said as children made drawings inside a warm tent. Adults sipped tea and chatted while their phones charged. The emergency facility is located in Kyiv’s Troieshchina district, on the left bank of the Dnipro River. Outside it was -18C. There was bright sunshine and snow.“Russia is trying to break us. It’s deliberate genocide against the Ukrainian people. Putin wants us to capitulate so we give up the Donbas region,” Natalya said. “Kyiv didn’t use to feel like a frontline city. Now it does. People are dying of cold in their homes in the 21st century. The idea is to make us leave and to create a new refugee crisis for Europe.” Natalia and Danylo near the ‘resilience point’ in Troyeshchyna district Her apartment is in one of 2,600 buildings in the Ukrainian capital currently without power or heating. The Kremlin has been bombing the country’s energy infrastructure since the start of its full-scale invasion nearly four years ago, targeting substations, thermal power plants and rescue workers battling to save the electricity network from multiple attacks.In recent weeks Russia has overwhelmed Kyiv’s air defences and inflicted further damage, coinciding with one of the coldest, bitterest winters for decades. Ballistic missiles flattened the Darnytska combined heat and power plant that supplied much of the left bank of the Dnipro. There have been frequent capital-wide blackouts restricting electricity supply to three or four hours a day. Two-year-old Danylo drawing at the resilience point Natalya said the impact of Vladimir Putin’s aerial campaign was reminiscent of the 1932-33 famine in the Soviet Ukraine, engineered by Stalin, in which millions perished. The words in Ukrainian are similar – holodomor (extermination by starvation) and kholodomor (death by cold). “Putin wants to do to Kyiv what he did to Mariupol,” she said, adding that many of those shivering in the capital had fled fighting elsewhere.“There has been a massive impact on families and people with children,” said Toby Fricker, a spokesperson for UNICEF, which had donated the warming tent. In Kyiv, 45% of schools are closed because of a lack of central heating. “Education has been disrupted. Kids and teenagers experience social isolation. They are missing out on normal life,” Fricker said.Some mums have swapped tips in chat groups about cheap accommodation abroad, in Bulgaria, Egypt and Greece. Others have decided to stay put. Yuliia, a mother of six-year-old twins, said: “I see reasons to leave and to remain. At the moment we are together with my parents. If I left I would lose them,.” She added: “We don’t know how long this situation will last. It’s cold. We sleep in our hats.”Residents have used ingenious hacks to try to make their homes a bit warmer. They have bought power banks, camping gear, gas cylinders and generators, a rumbling presence outside offices and shops on Kyiv’s icy streets. Some people heat bricks and rocks over gas stoves. Others have erected tents inside living rooms. Cafes are a popular refugee. Ukraine’s state emergency service has set up shelters with beds.Julia Po, an artist, showed her seventh-floor home in Kyiv’s Dniprovskyi neighbourhood. She led the way with a torch up a dark staircase. With no electricity, the lights and lift do not work; frozen water pipes burst two weeks ago, causing a flood; a chill wind whipped through slatted panels. “The building dates from the 70s and the Soviet era. It’s badly designed and can’t cope,” she said. Julia Po with her cat, Thom Yorke Po has been using bubble wrap to insulate her door and protect her plants. It is 9C in the kitchen Po had insulated her front door with bubble wrap. Walls, windows and a ficus house plant had also been wrapped, in order to reduce drafts. She sleeps under two blankets, wearing thermal underwear and a hoodie. “Underneath, from the ground, it’s just cold. When you wake up in the morning you can feel your kidneys. My electric kettle cracked. I didn’t wash my hair for two weeks,” she said.Her cat – named after the Radiohead singer Thom Yorke – sleeps under a blanket in a cupboard. Po, originally from Russian-occupied Crimea, said she felt she had been dispossessed. “It’s as if someone has stolen my home. There is the same vibe as 2022. I’ve been through several stages, from depression-aggression to acceptance and a degree of irony. It’s not pleasant, but what can you do? There is a war in our country, unfortunately. This is our reality.” Po showing the gas burner she uses during blackouts The artist, who has a gas stove and a boiler, acknowledged she was better off than some of her neighbours. The blackouts have badly hit pensioners, who are often too hard-up to buy extra equipment. Some are trapped in their flats. At least 10 people have died from hypothermia and 1,469 have been hospitalised. Russian attacks on power facilities have all the while continued, with strikes on Thursday in Kyiv and the battered southern city of Odesa.1:40