Natalya Pavlovna watched her two-year-old son, Danylo, playing with Lego. “We’re taking a break from the cold,” she said, as children drew pictures inside a warm tent. Adults sipped tea and chatted while their phones charged. This emergency shelter is in Kyiv’s Troieshchina district, on the left bank of the Dnipro River. Outside, it was -18°C, with bright sunshine and snow.
“Russia is trying to break us. It’s deliberate genocide against the Ukrainian people. Putin wants us to capitulate and give up the Donbas region,” Natalya said. “Kyiv didn’t used 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 create a new refugee crisis for Europe.”
Her apartment is 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 trying to save the electricity network from repeated attacks.
In recent weeks, Russia has overwhelmed Kyiv’s air defenses and inflicted further damage, coinciding with one of the coldest, bitterest winters in decades. Ballistic missiles flattened the Darnytska combined heat and power plant, which supplied much of the left bank of the Dnipro. There have been frequent city-wide blackouts, restricting electricity to just three or four hours a day.
Natalya said the impact of Vladimir Putin’s aerial campaign reminded her of the 1932-33 famine in Soviet Ukraine, engineered by Stalin, which killed millions. The Ukrainian words 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 people 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 donated the warming tent. In Kyiv, 45% of schools are closed due to 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 mothers have swapped tips in chat groups about cheap accommodation abroad, in Bulgaria, Egypt, and Greece. Others have decided to stay. Yuliia, a mother of six-year-old twins, said: “I see reasons to leave and to stay. Right now, we are together with my parents. If I left, I would lose them.” She added: “We don’t know how long this 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, which rumble outside offices and shops on Kyiv’s icy streets. Some people heat bricks and rocks over gas stoves. Others have set up tents inside their living rooms. Cafes have become popular refuges. Ukraine’s state emergency service has set up shelters with beds.
Artist Julia Po showed her seventh-floor home in Kyiv’s Dniprovskyi neighborhood. She led the way with a torch up a dark staircase. With no electricity, the lights and elevator don’t work; frozen water pipes burst two weeks ago, causing a flood; and a chill wind blew through slatted panels. “The building dates from the 1970s and the Soviet era. It’s badly designed and can’t cope,” she said.
Po has been using bubble wrap to insulate her windows.Po insulated her front door with bubble wrap and also wrapped her walls, windows, and a ficus plant to keep out drafts. She sleeps under two blankets, wearing thermal underwear and a hoodie. “The cold comes up from the ground. When you wake up in the morning, you can feel it in your kidneys. My electric kettle cracked, and I didn’t wash my hair for two weeks,” she said. Her cat, named after Radiohead singer Thom Yorke, sleeps under a blanket in a cupboard. Po, originally from Russian-occupied Crimea, feels dispossessed. “It’s as if someone has stolen my home. It feels like 2022 all over again. I’ve gone through several stages, from depression and aggression to acceptance and a bit of irony. It’s not pleasant, but what can you do? There’s a war in our country, unfortunately. This is our reality.”
Po, who has a gas stove and boiler, acknowledged she is better off than some of her neighbors. The blackouts have hit pensioners especially hard, as many cannot afford extra equipment. Some are trapped in their apartments. At least 10 people have died from hypothermia, and 1,469 have been hospitalized. Russian attacks on power facilities continue, with strikes hitting Kyiv and the battered southern city of Odesa on Thursday.
Maxim Timchenko, head of the energy provider DTEK, said Moscow has destroyed 80% of his company’s power generation capacity. “This isn’t just an energy crisis—it’s a humanitarian and national crisis. As a country, we are in survival mode,” he said. Only one of DTEK’s five power plants is currently connected to the grid, and repairs are difficult because “everything is frozen.”
Timchenko called for urgent international help, including additional air defenses, ammunition, and an energy ceasefire—something Moscow briefly agreed to at Donald Trump’s request before resuming bombing days later. “Kyiv has become the main target. We’ve lost all power generation sources in the city. We’re doing everything we can to keep the economy alive,” he said.
Oleh Yaruta, a DTEK engineer repairing an underground power cable, said Kyiv’s power grid is overloaded, suffering burnouts as people use electric heaters and boilers to stay warm. Climbing out of a hole, he showed an iPad with a long list of pending repairs due to outages across the capital. When asked about Russians, he replied, “They are devils and orcs. They’re bombing us because they can’t conquer us.”
Earlier this week, electricity briefly returned to some left-bank buildings, with lights flickering back on for a few hours. Natasha Naboka shared that in January, she shared a bed with her 10-year-old daughter, Sofiia, and their Yorkshire terrier, Bonya. “We were all under one blanket. Bonya wore a jacket. I woke up with my nose frozen—it was 4–5°C inside the apartment.” She added, “Sofiia’s school was closed. For her, it was an adventure.”
With no working fridge, Naboka leaves food on her fifth-floor balcony. She washes clothes by hand and takes them in a backpack to dry at her workplace, a beauty parlor in central Kyiv where the power situation is better. During air raids, she and Sofiia hide in the corridor between two walls. Her husband, a soldier, is stationed in Kharkiv oblast, another region severely affected by power outages.
Some Kyiv residents haveThe city authorities were criticized for failing to protect infrastructure. Volodymyr Zelenskyy has blamed the city’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, accusing him of doing too little. However, Naboka said the Russians were at fault. “They thought they could seize Ukraine very quickly. They failed. So instead, Putin is trying to destroy us.” She added, “This is all about the jealousy and unhealthy ambition of one man.”
Frequently Asked Questions
FAQs The Winter Power Crisis in Kyiv
Understanding the Situation
Whats happening in Kyiv this winter
Russias attacks on Ukraines energy infrastructure have destroyed much of Kyivs power supply leaving residents without reliable electricity and heat during an extremely cold winter
Why is the power out
Russia has been deliberately targeting power plants electrical substations and heating systems as part of its war strategy aiming to break civilian morale and make basic survival difficult
Is it just a blackout or something worse
Its a prolonged systemic collapse Its not a shortterm outage but a sustained destruction of the energy grid that takes a long time to repair under constant threat of further attacks
Daily Life Survival
How are people staying warm without heat
Residents are using whatever they can layering clothes burning wood or coal in stoves if available gathering in designated heating points with generators and sealing off rooms to conserve warmth
How do they cook and get food
Many use camp stoves cook on open fires or rely on canned food Communal kitchens and humanitarian aid points provide hot meals Power is sometimes restored for a few hours a day which people use to cook and charge devices
Do people have any light or power at all
Power is often rationed through scheduled blackouts or emergency repairs providing a few hours of electricity per day People rely heavily on power banks candles and flashlights
How are hospitals and essential services functioning
They run on backup generators which require scarce fuel Services are severely strained prioritizing critical care Many nonurgent procedures are postponed
Broader Impacts Context
Is this a war crime
International humanitarian law prohibits attacks on objects indispensable to civilian survival like power grids especially in winter The UN and human rights groups are investigating these attacks as potential war crimes
Why cant Ukraine just fix the power lines
Engineers are working around the clock as energy front heroes However repairs are dangerous and new attacks often destroy freshly repaired infrastructure Some specialized equipment is also in short supply
How is the rest of Ukraine affected
While Kyiv is a major focus Russias strikes have targeted the national grid Many cities and regions across Ukraine face similar though sometimes less severe conditions with rolling
