How Kyiv copes with blackouts | Russo-Ukrainian War

Kyiv, Ukraine – It gets so dark so early, says Lyubov Fedorchenko, that you can feel like you’re living in a bygone era.

“I never understood my grandmother who said they would go to sleep after sunset,” the owner of a four-bedroom house in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, told Al Jazeera.

“But these days we live like hamsters. When it gets dark, we go to bed.

Fedorchenko’s untimely slumbers have been the result of massive power cuts since October 10, when Russian bombs began raining down on cities across Ukraine during the final phase of the months-long war.

The barrage of missile and drone attacks targeted electricity transmission and water pumping stations, heating facilities and other key infrastructure, damaging the country’s power grid and forcing authorities to impose restrictions. restrictions on energy consumption.

Millions of Ukrainians depend on damaged or destroyed infrastructure during the winter, when temperatures drop well below freezing – and a lack of central heating can have catastrophic consequences.

“As winter approaches, Russian leaders are deliberately depriving people of basic things: water, electricity, heating,” Attorney General Andriy Kostin said earlier this week. “It’s terrorism and war crimes.”

The Kremlin denies targeting civilian sites, but does not rule out other attacks.

“That’s not all we could have done,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said on October 31.

“It’s dark night”

In western Kiev, Polina Shevchenko shares a two-bedroom apartment with her boyfriend Evhen Denisenko and Freeda, their nine-month-old mittelschnauzer.

Regular but unplanned power cuts that last for hours have turned their lives upside down.

Dishwashing and laundry should be scheduled according to power-on times.

Polina Shevchenko and her dog, Freeda [Courtesy Polina Shevchenko/Al Jazeera]

After every walk with Freeda, the dog’s paws need to be washed – but the water supply depends on electricity, so Shevchenko uses jars and bottles to pour the water.

At night, the couple would usually watch one of the many movies they had downloaded or turn to their vastly expanded collection of board games.

Shevchenko understands that their problems pale in comparison to what millions of other Ukrainians have experienced since the Russian invasion began in late February.

“There are those who feel much worse,” she said. “Those who have no electricity at all, no water, or who are on the front line.”

Denisenko, a 30-year-old computer expert who works from home, had to shell out $1,000 for a power bank – a hard-to-find item in today’s war-torn Ukraine – that can be plugged into his laptop and the three computer screens he uses for his work.

Shevchenko, meanwhile, travels to the center of Kyiv for her work as a tutor. Her evening walk to the subway station can be full of existential horrors, she lamented.

“It is pitch dark and the [air raid] the siren moans,” she said.

Without electricity or street lights, apartment buildings and shopping malls appear post-apocalyptic black, and only tiny halos of cellphone flashlights indicate pedestrians treading carefully on the rutted roads.

Drivers can barely see those without flashlights or wearing black, while turned-off traffic lights create chaos.

“You cross a railroad crossing with a prayer,” taxi driver Oleksander Glushchenko said.

New ways to gain power

In some cases, however, power outages trigger inventiveness.

Diana Maslennikova said her husband found a way to connect their car battery to the power grid in their 15th-floor apartment in central Kyiv. The voltage is not enough to power the refrigerator or the washing machine, but the energy-saving bulbs are on.

“Now he is spreading this beautiful knowledge,” explains Maslennikova, a manual therapist who receives her patients at home.

Meanwhile, when a woman became helplessly trapped in the building’s elevator, neighbors quickly let her out – and set up emergency boxes in each of the building’s three elevators. They contain an empty jar for emergency relief; candles and flashlights; snacks and a mat to sit on.

The building’s height means that Maslennikova often witnesses death and destruction as missiles and drones land in the surrounding areas.

On October 17, she saw what Ukrainian officials say were Iranian-made suicide bomber drones hit a five-story building next to a train station where her son’s friend lives.

The friend was out – but his grandmother was among five people killed in the attack, she said.

With every power outage, there’s a new problem for Maslennikova – from patients who choose not to climb the stairs to her apartment to the meals kitchen that is suddenly ruined.

Yet, she joked, there was one family member who benefited from the new way of life: their cat, which these days is petted much more often than before.

“He is surprised by so much attention,” Maslennikova said.

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