KYIV: Olena Janchuk spends another day of freezing isolation in her high-rise apartment.
The former kindergarten teacher suffers from severe rheumatoid arthritis, and has been trapped for weeks on the 19th floor of her Kyiv tower block, 650 steps from the ground.
Long daily blackouts caused by Russia’s bombardment of power plants and transmission lines have made working elevators a luxury.
With January temperatures plummeting to -10 Celsius (14 degrees Fahrenheit), there’s a permanent line of frost on the inside of Janchuk’s windows, white patterns creeping across the glass by morning.
The 53-year-old huddles over a makeshift fireplace of candles arranged beneath stacked bricks, designed to absorb and slowly release heat. USB charging cables snake across the floor from overloaded power strips, while her electric blanket is hooked up to a power bank rationed for the coldest hours.
“When there’s no light and heat for seventeen and a half hours, you have to come up with something,” she said. “The bricks work best in a small room, so we stay in there.”
By day, the family shifts into rooms that catch the winter sun, the function of each space changing with the blackout schedule. At night, heavy clothes stay on indoors as the apartment cools rapidly without central heating.
Kyiv, a city of about 3 million people, is dominated by tower blocks, many from the Soviet era, now left without power for most of the day.
In this fourth winter of war, electricity is a rationed commodity.
Residents plan their lives around electricity schedules: when to cook, shower, charge phones and run washing machines. Food is chosen for shelf life, water filtered into bottles and stored in buckets. Small camping gas burners are used to heat soup or tea when the power is out.
Sleep is fractured by air raid sirens and the need to use electricity during off-peak hours.
Outside, across snow-covered Kyiv, diesel generators rumble on commercial streets. Shoppers navigate aisles using phone flashlights, and bars glow by candlelight.
Apps notify users of narrowing electricity windows – usually just a few hours – enough for a household reboot.
Life gets harder on the higher floors
Janchuk’s 22-story building is located near a power station and residents can see the missile and drone attacks first hand, flashes lighting up the horizon at night.
During blackouts, they climb the stairs in darkness, phone lights bouncing off concrete steps, often accompanied by the echo of children and barking dogs. People sometimes leave plastic bags with cookies or water inside elevators for those who get stuck when the power cuts mid-ride.
Janchuk’s husband, out working most of the day, brings the groceries in the evening while her mother, 72-year-old Lyudmila Bachurina, is in charge of chores.
“It’s cold, but we manage,” the mother says, holding a square USB-charged flashlight she recently mounted on the wall. “When the lights come on, I start turning on the washing machine, fill up water bottles, cook food, charge power banks, run around the kitchen and run around the house.”
In upscale neighborhoods, residents pool funds for generators to keep elevators running. But most blocks – home to pensioners, families and people with disabilities – cannot afford them.
Disability advocates, including groups representing wounded war veterans, say staircases have become an invisible social barrier, cutting people off inside their own homes.
They are urging city officials to fund generators for residential buildings.
Until then, life bends around the electricity timetable. USB lamps, power banks and inverter batteries have become household staples. Telegram chats help neighbors check on the elderly and swap blackout updates.
From upper floors, Kyivans look out over a skyline of high rises and the city’s historic golden-domed churches. At night, flashes of explosions are visible as Russia continues its campaign against Ukraine’s energy system.
Russia has inflicted vast damage on Ukraine’s infrastructure
Too many power stations and transmission lines have been hit to meet demand, even with electricity imports from Europe. To prevent a grid collapse, operators impose rolling blackouts, keeping hospitals and critical services alive while homes go dark.
At one coal-fired power plant struck repeatedly, shift supervisor Yuriy walks through wreckage of charred machinery, collapsed roofs and control panels melted into useless lumps. Repairs are carried out by torchlight, giant sandbags shielding what still works. Photographs of colleagues killed on the job hang near the entrance.
“After missile and drone attacks, the consequences are terrible – large-scale,” he said.
Officials asked that the plant’s location and Yuriy’s full name not be disclosed for security reasons.
“Our energy equipment has been destroyed. It is expensive,” Yuriy said. “Right now, we’re restoring what we can.”
Ukraine’s energy sector has suffered more than $20 billion in direct war damage, according to a joint estimate by the World Bank, European Commission and the United Nations.
Kyiv has repeatedly updated its austere winter power-saving schedule, dimming or cutting streetlights in low-traffic areas and investing in less centralized power generation.
In the tower blocks, restoration feels far off.
“I’m tired, really tired, to be honest. When you can’t go outside, when you don’t see the sun, when there’s no light and you can’t even go to the store on your own… it wears you down,” Bachurina said.
“But the important thing, as all Ukrainians say now, is that we will endure anything until the war ends.”