James LandaleDiplomatic Correspondent
BBC
In her Soviet-era apartment block on the outskirts of eastern Kyiv, Oksana Zinkovska-Boyarska lives with daily power cuts. The lift to her eighth-floor apartment often stops, the lights go out and sometimes the pumps maintaining pressure in the gas central heating fail.
She has a big rechargeable battery pack to keep appliances going, but it costs €2,000 (£1,770) and it only lasts so long. Her husband Ievgen, a lawyer, often has to work by torchlight. Their two-year-old daughter Katia plays by candlelight too.
Amid air raids and cold darkness, Oksana says she and Ievgen worry constantly for Katia. “I can’t describe with words the animal fear when you take your child to the shelter during the explosions.
“I have never felt anything like that in my life and I wouldn’t want anyone to feel anything like that. The thought that she might be scared because there’s no light – this is terrible.”
Xavier Vanpevenaege/BBC
Oksana Zinkovska-Boyarska, pictured with her daughter Katia, says: “I can’t describe with words the animal fear when you take your child to the shelter during the explosions”
All across Ukraine, families are bracing themselves for even tougher times ahead – a long, cold winter in which Russian President Vladimir Putin attempts to finish off his invasion by striking Ukraine’s power supplies and networks.
Just last weekend, a massive drone and missile strike left much of the country for a time without power. Ukrainians are now enduring regular power cuts of up to 16 hours a day.
In winter, temperatures in Ukraine can plummet as low as -20C. One senior government figure told me they expect the next few months to be brutal.
“I think it will be the worst winter of our history,” says the official. “Russia will destroy our energy, our infrastructure, our heating. All state institutions should be prepared for the worst scenario.”
Maxim Timchenko, the chief executive of DTEK, a large private energy company in Ukraine, says: “Based on the intensity of attacks for the past two months, it is clear Russia is aiming for the complete destruction of Ukraine’s energy system.”
AFP via Getty Images
Ukrainians are now enduring regular power cuts of up to 16 hours a day
But according to one European envoy, it’s not just about people being cold at night or without light – there is more to Russia’s strategy.
“[This] is also about them not getting any bread from the bakery in the morning and not being able to go to work because there is no power for the factory,” says the envoy.
As the official puts it: “The goal of the Russians is to kill our economy.”
So how exactly will this strategy play out? And given that almost four years of war have taken their toll, what does it mean for Ukraine’s people – and the future of this long, hard war?
Frozen assets and suspended diplomacy
On the front line, the news is bleak. There are growing signs that the key eastern city of Pokrovsk may fall, giving Russian forces a boost in morale and a fresh platform to seize more of the Donetsk region.
Another issue that could impact morale is a massive corruption scandal affecting the government.
Prosecutors have accused ministers and officials of taking kickbacks from contracts to build defensive structures around Ukraine’s nuclear plants. Both of the ministers accused deny the allegations. But the risk for President Zelensky is that Ukrainians, many of whom are living in the cold and the dark, may lose trust in the administration.
Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images
On the front line, the news is similarly bleak. (Ukrainian servicemen pictured during training in 2024)
What’s more, for now, diplomatic efforts to end the war appear to be on hold.
Plans of a summit between Putin and US President Donald Trump are on the back burner after Moscow refused to budge from its maximalist war aims and the US imposed sanctions on Russian oil and gas.
“There is currently a pause,” a Kremlin spokesman said this week, “the situation is stalled.”
All the while, European nations squabble over what to do with €180bn (£160bn) in frozen Russian assets. They plan to use the cash to raise a so-called “repatriation loan” for Ukraine, repaid only if Russia ever pays reparations after the end of the war.
But a row over how to share the risk has left Kyiv’s coffers looking distinctly bare.
REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
The idea of a summit between Trump and Putin (pictured together in 2018) is now believed to be on the back burner
Yet it is the energy crisis that is worrying the Ukrainian government most, according to those I spoke to. “People are tired after four years of the war,” the official tells me.
“I am af
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