With the Power Out, Kyiv’s Residents Confront Cold as a Weapon of War

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“Cold in wartime is a powerful weapon,” Zoriana Hoshovska, who evacuated to the west of Ukraine, said by phone. “It affects people’s ability to work and think clearly — the body switches into survival mode.”

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Like many others, Hoshovska, 44, faced a choice between cold radiators in her Kyiv apartment and slightly warmer conditions outside the capital. Her decision was predictable.

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Spending her vacation in Ukraine’s West, Hoshovska, a communications manager, knew from her Kyiv building’s group chat that municipal engineers had turned off heating as the temperature sank. She opted not to return, instead temporarily moving with her young son to her native city of Rivne. While power and heating supplies there are extremely limited, conditions are slightly better than in the capital, she said. Power outages, for example, are more predictable and follow a schedule.

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She says local authorities were poorly prepared for the cold season — a sentiment echoed by Zelenskiy, who said that “time was lost” by the capital that requires the government to step in. 

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She still plans to return to Kyiv after neighbors told her that heating had been restored. Mindful of a repeat, Hoshovska has a contingency plan — friends have offered her a place to stay in cities such as Ivano-Frankivsk and even Warsaw, where she spent a year and a half immediately after Putin sent troops into Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022.

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“If the issue persists, our western allies should brace for a new wave of migrants from Ukraine,” she said.

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Downtown Kyiv is still full of people going about their daily lives, albeit wrapped in multiple layers of clothing. Traffic jams remain a regular occurence. The Kyiv metro, whose deep stations offer shelter from Russian bombardments, double up as places of relative warmth. 

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On one afternoon this week, there was a queue of more than five people at a hiking equipment store in downtown Kyiv, most in search of gear for indoors rather than outdoors. 

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“People come and ask, how can we keep warm?” said Bohdan Hriazev, 24, a sales assistant. The store has been without heating for about a week, and Hriazev wore a hat, a zhyletka, or padded vest, gloves and Crocs, which he said protect well against the cold. A headlamp was a useful addition to his gear.

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“After they buy a sleeping bag, a tent, a camping mat and a gas heater, people start thinking: why not spend some time outdoors? And they actually go,” he said. “Culture is changing because of the hardships.”

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Back in 2022 after the first Russian shelling of Ukraine’s capital, so-called invincibility hubs were established in schools, shops and emergency service tents to offer citizens access to heat and electricity to charge their phones. They are making a comeback as the situation has again become more critical, above all on the left bank of the Dnipro River which flows through the capital and cleaves the country between west and east.

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According to latest assessments by the European Union, if attacks continue at the current pace and scale, entire left-bank regions of Ukraine — home to around 15 million people prior to 2022 — risk losing access to electricity supply. Energy companies report that equipment reserves have been exhausted, with no remaining stocks of power transformers or other critical supplies.  

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Sitting in an “invincibility hub” tent on Kyiv’s left bank, Natalia, the mother of a six-year-old child, said she’d been without heating for almost five days and electricity for three days as of Wednesday afternoon. It’s 15 degrees Celsius in her apartment when they cook on a gas stove; otherwise the temperature is low, she explained. “The refrigerator became the warmest place in my house,” she said. 

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Almost all those at the invincibility point have either small children or older relatives whom they won’t leave behind in Kyiv. A few have so-called dachas, typically small country houses, which are not suitable to live in during winter. All are tired of wearing at least three sweaters and padded trousers. “But we hold on,” said Eugenia, another visitor.