“Wait ‘til it will get chilly—actually chilly, Ukrainian chilly,” a buddy warned once I arrived in Kyiv in 2022. I didn’t know what he meant till this 12 months—current winters right here, like virtually in all places, have been comparatively gentle. However 2026 is a throwback: it’s been snowing on and off for weeks, and temperatures, at their lowest in years, are hovering between 5 and 15 levels Fahrenheit, and colder at evening. Vladimir Putin is making an attempt to weaponize the frigid climate with big drone and missile strikes each few days, knocking out warmth, water, and electrical energy in Kyiv and different cities. But when his objective is to freeze Ukrainians into submission, breaking their will, it isn’t working. If something, they’re extra decided to withstand.
Russia has been concentrating on Ukraine’s power infrastructure since winter 2022. However this 12 months is totally different—not simply the climate, but in addition the size and ferocity of Putin’s assaults. The bombardments escalated in December, and after practically two months, they’ve come to look a lifestyle. In Kyiv, there are air alerts just about each evening, punctuated each few days by a very savage assault. On January 9, Moscow launched 242 drones and 36 missiles, knocking out electrical energy throughout 70 p.c of Ukraine’s capital and leaving some 6,000 condo buildings with out warmth. The January 20 assault of 339 drones and 34 rockets included a Zircon hypersonic missile designed to destroy a warship. January 23 introduced one other 375 drones and 21 missiles, together with one other dreaded Zircon.
Ukrainian power firms and attacking Russians play a macabre sport of cat-and-mouse. After every assault, the businesses scramble to restore the injury, usually finishing the duty solely to have the enemy strike once more. On the morning of January 23, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko introduced that two-thirds of the injury from the earlier bombardment had been repaired, leaving fewer than 2,000 buildings with out warmth. By the subsequent morning, the tally once more approached 6,000—roughly half the town’s housing inventory, in lots of circumstances buildings that been with out warmth the week earlier than.
Some neighborhoods reside with a brutal trifecta—no warmth, water, or electrical energy. Faculties are closed for the month. Snow and ice blanket the town; authorities don’t do an excellent job of plowing, and at the least one particular person has died after slipping on the ice. The CEO of DTEK, Ukraine’s largest non-public power firm, has declared a “humanitarian disaster.” A number of thousand state-run “invincibility facilities,” scattered throughout the town in heated tents and public buildings, provide heat, sizzling drinks, and a spot to cost a telephone. Mayor Klitschko has urged anybody who can depart Kyiv to take action, and his workplace says 600,000 of practically 3 million residents have left—most of them to stick with pals and family members elsewhere in Ukraine.
Life goes on downtown: retailers, bars, eating places, and cafes are as vigorous as ever. However many Ukrainians really feel forgotten by the world, as international information facilities on the World Financial Discussion board in Davos and Donald Trump invitations Putin to affix his Orwellian Board of Peace.
I’ve it comparatively straightforward. My high-rise condo constructing can afford a generator to maintain the elevators operating and the lights on in frequent areas. I’ve two car-battery-size energy stations that I cost when the electrical energy is flowing, then use to maintain the lights on in my condo when the ability goes out. Issues get tough when the outages, which generally drag on for greater than 24 hours, outlast the battery, which might’t energy the range, so I solely cook dinner when there’s electrical energy.
However even in my pampered constructing, the knock-on results could be merciless. Each few days, the generator runs out of gas, and it’s usually laborious to discover a resupply in a besieged metropolis the place tens of hundreds of turbines, giant and small, are churning day and evening. So too alternative elements for my energy stations: When one in every of them blew out final month, it took practically three weeks to restore it—so like everybody, I maintain a retailer of candles prepared. A number of instances every week, the intense chilly freezes a water pipe in our constructing, and we go with out water for a day or so. Personally, I discover that the toughest. Few issues are extra dehumanizing than life with out plumbing.
Final week, I crossed the Dnipro River that bisects the town to go to a much less lucky neighborhood on what’s often called the Left Financial institution. Settled a lot later than the remainder of the capital, it boasts luxurious high-rises alongside the river, but in addition huge swaths of Soviet-era condo blocks—drab, squat buildings with small rooms and low ceilings, made from the most affordable of building supplies and with solely essentially the most minimal of consideration to human consolation. Russian strikes on power transmission strains have lower a lot of the Left Financial institution off from producing hubs throughout the river, leaving many buildings with out gentle or warmth for weeks.
One constructing I go to within the Rusanivka neighborhood has had no heating for the reason that devastating strike on January 9. Water was restored just a few days in the past, however it solely runs chilly, and there’s nonetheless virtually no electrical energy. Katya—like everybody I meet within the constructing, she declines to provide her final identify—invitations me to her condo. An HR supervisor in her early 40s with lengthy, curly hair, she left Ukraine when Russia invaded in 2022 however just lately returned, drawn by a way of patriotic responsibility. She makes use of her telephone to gentle the best way as we trudge as much as her sixth-floor flat—elevators are a distant reminiscence. It’s cheerful sufficient, lit by battery-powered Christmas lights and the wan winter gentle filtering in via just a few small home windows, and she or he reveals me the place she’s been spending her days—propped up in mattress, beneath a heavy quilt. “We’ll survive,” she says breezily as I depart the condo. “We’re Ukrainians.”
I meet Liudmyla, 88, within the stairwell, as she heads as much as her flat on the 14th ground. Once I ask how usually she makes the climb, she tells me it’s usually twice a day—she cares for a number of neighbors’ cats alongside along with her personal and should feed them. A tiny creature bundled in a number of coats and a furry hat, Liudmyla jokes that I ought to be jealous of her new, highly effective leg muscle tissue. She has a fuel range however tries to not use it—who is aware of how lengthy the outages will final?—and hasn’t bathed in practically two weeks. But when she feels any self-pity, I don’t see it. She’s pleased with her grandson preventing on the jap entrance and decided to outlast the power strikes. “It’s simply two extra months,” she says, “after which spring will come after which summer season, and ultimately we’ll beat them.”
Caleb Carr, the historian and novelist, defined what I noticed in Rusanivka in his 2002 guide on warfare towards civilians. Man has been waging what Carr referred to as “punitive” campaigns towards noncombatants since Roman instances, if not earlier than. Nonetheless, the impact is nearly all the time the identical: as a substitute of beating the focused inhabitants into submission, assaults on civilians usually strengthen their resolve.
In Ukraine, in accordance with a Kyiv Worldwide Institute of Sociology ballot carried out the week after the January 9 strike, 69 p.c of respondents doubted that Trump’s peace course of would finish the battle, and 77 p.c felt Ukraine “may proceed efficient resistance.”
The power blitz has introduced the conflict dwelling to many who had grown accustomed to residing removed from the entrance. There’s a brand new solidarity on show within the social media “home chat” in my condo constructing—individuals keen to assist their neighbors and pitch in to maintain the lights on. Social media can also be filled with posts in regards to the DTEK upkeep crews working across the clock to revive energy. A number of company chains are giving them free meals and sizzling drinks, and plenty of residents revere them with a gratitude as soon as reserved for troopers preventing within the East.
Nobody thinks they’ve seen the final strike on the nation’s important infrastructure. Laborious as the upkeep crews work to restore power substations and transmission strains, it’s far harder in wartime to revive the services that generate electrical energy, and nationwide capability has fallen to lower than half what it was in February 2022.
Mendacity within the chilly the opposite evening in my constructing’s basement shelter—no warmth, no insulation—listening to the drones and missiles exploding exterior, it abruptly occurred to me that issues may worsen: just a few extra strikes, and the entire nation would possibly get up to no electrical energy. But when Ukrainians are considering that approach, they don’t let on. “After all the things that has occurred since 2022,” one buddy wrote to me the subsequent day, “we don’t have the fitting to surrender. There may be nothing to do however stand sturdy and endure the trials.”
