For three weeks now, residents of Kiev have been suffering the consequences of massive Russian attacks on energy infrastructure. The situation is being exacerbated by persistent, severe frost with temperatures well below freezing, which has gripped Ukraine for almost two weeks. According to Mayor Vitaliy Klitschko, around 2.600 apartment buildings in the capital have been without heat since January 22.
It's no surprise that many people are leaving the city under these circumstances. Anastasia's family is among them. "Since we had no electricity, heating or water, my husband, our two children and I moved to my parents' cottage, and my father is there too," she tells DW. The cottage outside the city has a gas boiler for heating, and there is a diesel generator in the garden. "Then we have light, water and heating. The water comes from a well. When the generator is working, we have electricity and the pump is working," she says.
Anastasia is a beautician and has flexible working hours, which usually depend on her clients. She is currently on vacation. "My husband is an energy engineer and has to travel to Kiev every day. The journey is long and tiring, because the highway is icy. It takes him up to two hours to get to work," she says.
Hotels offer discounted accommodation
Ukrainian writer and translator Tamara Horycha Sernya also left Kiev with her children. “I saw a post on Facebook where a woman was offering Kiev residents a 50 percent discount at her hotel in the Lviv region. She charges about 900 hryvnia (about 18 euros) per day for an adult, including three meals. We packed our things and left the very next day,” she says.
The hotel is also without electricity, but the water supply is working, and fireplaces and stoves provide heat. "Yesterday, 15 more guests arrived, most of them from Kiev. They are mostly women with children," says Tamara Horiča Sernja. She is very happy to have found accommodation, because her apartment in Kiev currently has neither water nor heating.
Schools and colleges are closed.
The winter break in most educational institutions in the capital, with the exception of kindergartens, has been extended until February 1. The government hopes to redistribute the energy saved in this way to residential areas.
As DW reporters saw on site, the halls and classrooms at the faculties are indeed empty, but the dormitories are not completely empty. "Most of the students have gone home for the holidays. Only those who have jobs in Kiev are still here," says the headmistress of the dormitory at the Faculty of Transport and Communications, who wishes to remain anonymous. According to her, the electricity supply is problematic, but the water and heating in the dormitory are back. "After the Russian shelling, we had no electricity or heating for 28 hours, but the temperature in the rooms did not drop below 10 degrees Celsius," she says.
How many people are there in Kiev?
Since the start of the intense Russian attacks on January 9, about 600.000 of Kyiv’s 3,6 million residents have left the city. Mayor Vitali Klitschko told AFP in an interview. His press service said the figure was based on data on mobile phone usage. There are currently 600.000 fewer mobile phones in Kyiv than usual. “Some have heeded the advice and left the city, as they have other accommodation outside the city or have gone to stay with friends,” the city administration told the Ukrainian Pravda newspaper.
However, the military administration in Kiev cannot confirm that figure. "If so many electricity customers had left, the supply situation would probably not have been so critical," military administration spokeswoman Katerina Pop told Ukrainian television.
Roman Nizovich, research director at the Dixie Group think tank, disagrees. "Electricity consumption can indeed be used to determine population, but I'm not sure that's possible at the moment, because the electricity supply is very irregular," he tells DW in an interview, explaining: "As soon as electricity comes back on, consumption jumps because people immediately start doing laundry and cooking."
Alone with a baby during winter
Regardless of how many residents have left Kiev, the situation with heating and electricity remains difficult.
Anya Sirotenko is among those trying to cope without leaving the city. The young woman comes from the part of the Kherson region that is under Russian occupation. She now lives in a skyscraper in Kiev. She takes care of her three-month-old baby alone, because her husband is called up for military service. "I live on the 15th floor. There is often no electricity, and when there is, there is no water either," she tells DW.
Her stove only runs on electricity, so she bought a gas camping stove. “I can fry eggs with it and heat water to wash the baby. It’s good that the baby is still breastfeeding,” she says. She’s also pleased that the heating in her building has mostly worked so far, except after the last major Russian attack.
Marta Semenyuk, who lives in a building in Kiev with her husband and young child, has had cold radiators for weeks. To warm up, she turns on a gas heater. "Then we turn on the fan to spread the heat throughout the apartment," she says.
Marta Semenjuk does not want to take her child to kindergarten, even though it is not closed yet. "Last Sunday the temperature there was only 11 to 13 degrees. They promised us that they would turn on the generator for additional heating, so we took the children, but they did not turn it on. So the little one got bronchitis," the mother complains.
Caring for the vulnerable
Given the difficult situation, the Kiev authorities are providing hot meals for particularly vulnerable citizens, especially pensioners and people with disabilities. On January 13, Mayor Klitschko announced that he had issued an order to the city administration and state district administrations to provide hot meals daily for people in need of assistance, who are registered in district centers. “These are primarily elderly people who live alone,” Klitschko explained.
Many volunteers are also helping. “We deliver hot meals directly to apartments where the elderly and disabled live. We are in contact with building managers, who are in almost every apartment building. They identify people who are immobile and pass this information on to us. I personally deliver about 115 meals a week,” says Nikolay Dyachenko, head of a self-help organization in one of the districts of Kiev.
No heating until spring?
Meanwhile, despite harsh weather conditions, energy system maintenance workers often risk their lives to ensure the supply of electricity, water and heating. Oleksiy Brecht, a member of the board of directors and acting director of the energy company Ukrenergo, was electrocuted on January 21 while repairing a damaged substation near Kyiv.
According to Roman Nizovich, about 20 percent of apartments in the Ukrainian capital are currently without heating. “It takes time to reconnect all of them to heating. It could take one to two weeks,” he says. Smaller power plants are currently carrying the bulk of the load. “Even when the heat supply is restored, it will not be able to operate at full capacity,” Nizovich explains.
In buildings where pipes or radiators have burst because the water in them has frozen, heating, he says, will probably not be available until spring. It is possible that heating systems will have to be replaced in entire apartment blocks.
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