KYIV -- When fuses blew and the music stopped at a rave party at the techno club Otel on the first weekend in December, shaven-headed men stripped to the waist and quirkily dressed women in sunglasses didn’t miss a beat, dancing on to their own rhythmic chants.
As the wall of sound crumbled after each short-circuit of the generator, the crowd shouted “Putin is a d***head” -- a slogan that originated among soccer fans in 2014 and became more widespread following Russia’s invasion in February -- and waited, undaunted, for the power and the pulse to return.
It was one of the countless acts of defiance against Russia’s repeated attacks on energy infrastructure, which have become part of the abnormal new normal -- like many of the dangers and deprivations inflicted on Ukrainians in the unprovoked war.
Since early October, Russia has launched multiple large-scale missile and drone attacks of this kind, causing power, water, and heating outages in cities and towns across the country while also killing dozens of people. The latest came on December 15.
Moscow opened this new front in its war against Ukraine after suffering a series of major setbacks on the battlefield, seemingly hoping that as winter descends, severe conditions will force Ukraine into concessions -- something it has failed spectacularly to do so far.
The infrastructure assaults have added to ire against Russia in the West --"Targeted attacks on civilian infrastructure with the clear aim to cut off men, women, children [from] water, electricity, and heating with the winter coming…are acts of pure terror,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in October -- and pose a persistent, serious threat.
On December 7, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko warned of a possible "apocalypse" scenario if such strikes continue: the prolonged loss of power, water, and heat supply making life in households impossible because of the low temperatures. According to the World Health Organization, this winter may be “life-threatening for millions of people in Ukraine,” particularly those living in villages and cities close to the fighting in the east and south.
But as citizens, authorities, and energy companies learn to deal with the blackouts and other problems caused by power outages, there are growing indications that Moscow's efforts on the “energy front” may end up falling flat.
Invincibility In Progress?
“We have no choice but to survive,” Tymofiy Mylovanov, a former economy minister who is an adviser to President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, told RFE/RL at the Kyiv School of Economics, where he is president.
In a bright underground space that now serves as both a shelter and lecture hall, Mylovanov said he had spent the last several months “transforming the school into a stronghold" -- redesigning the building's cellars, installing power generators and satellite dishes, and securing stocks of fuel and water.
Now the university has electricity, heating, and an Internet connection allowing it to operate not only during Kyiv’s frequent air-raid alerts but even when Russian attacks plunge most of the city into darkness. “The last time when we had this many students coming was before the pandemic,” he said.
Mylovanov, who acknowledged that these upgrades wouldn’t be possible without financial support from the university’s international partners, said that one of their aims was “to show others that it is possible to prepare even for the worst-case scenarios.”
But the logistic and material challenges posed by the strikes on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure are huge.
In the wake of the biggest power and water outage that have hit Kyiv, following a Russian attack on November 23, Zelenskiy announced the rollout of so-called "points of invincibility" throughout Ukraine in an effort to prepare for future emergency shutdowns.
Just across the street from the glass-sheathed Kyiv School of Economics, one such point was recently opened in a public elementary school. Anybody can now come to the school's spacious gym to warm up, charge their phone, and get some water, said Hanna Khimich, a school administration worker who looks after the place.
Empty at the time of RFE/RL’s visit, however, the gym did not look like a place that could provide adequate protection if the “apocalypse” Klitschko warned of were to arrive soon. Like some other “points of invincibility” around Ukraine, the school has problems to resolve, Khimich said: It received a power generator but had not yet arranged supplies of the fuel needed to run it.
Mylovanov believes that the “points of invincibility” are a "realistic response" to the fact that neither the national nor the municipal authorities could singlehandedly establish thousands of emergency centers in a matter of weeks. They are like "focal points," he said, that enable Ukrainians to join efforts and channel the necessary resources to places designated in advance.
So far, regional military administrations, the State Emergency Service, and local communities have organized more than 5,000 such points, and more than 100,000 people had already used them, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, the deputy head of Zelenskiy’s office, said in early December. Klitschko said that nearly 500 autonomous heating hubs had been prepared in Kyiv.
For now, at least, the “points of invincibility” are being treated as a last resort by many Ukrainians already inured to the ordeals caused by Russia’s energy-infrastructure attacks. Khimich said that hardly anybody was coming to the haven provided by the school in central Kyiv, adding: "Perhaps it is not that cold yet or maybe people arranged other places for themselves."
This comes as no surprise in a city that has been dealing with energy shortages for months. Since the onset of autumn, Ukrainians have been buying not only warm clothes, flashlights, and candles but also power banks, gas camping stoves, and multi-liter water tanks. Kyiv's restaurants, cafes, and bars have adapted to the new conditions quickly, too -- many of them have power generators, and some proprietors have bought gas or electric heaters.
But anybody trying to cross a street in the dark or enjoy their coffee in the exhaust fumes of a power generator knows that these temporary solutions come at a cost.
The number of people killed in traffic accidents in the capital has increased sixfold since the rolling blackouts began, according to Kyiv police spokesman Andriy Molokoyedov, and as many as 2,500 thousand fires were caused in November in Ukraine by attempts to establish alternative energy sources, according to the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
Stabilization Efforts
Ukrainians are managing to get by with the help of these temporary solutions mainly because the Russian attacks on infrastructure have proved less effective than Moscow may have expected.
During a big barrage on December 5, Ukrainian air defense shot down more than 60 of the more than 70 missiles fired by Russia, officials said. According to the General Staff of Ukraine's military, in November alone, as much as 72 percent of 239 cruise missiles and 80 percent of 80 Iranian-made Shahed-136 “kamikaze” drones launched by Russia were destroyed before they reached their targets.
After the strike, Ukraine's energy network continued to operate stably without nationwide problems, authorities said, and two days later 90 percent of consumers affected by emergency shutdowns had been reconnected to the power grid.
"It is not possible to form a definitive prognosis [about the effects of any further attacks] but by this point, we know what to do in case of various scenarios," Oleksandr Kharchenko, adviser to Ukraine's energy minister and director of the Energy Industry Research Center, an NGO, told RFE/RL.
According to him, the growing efficiency of Ukraine’s air-defense systems combined with additional physical protection around the power grids and new engineering solutions implemented by power and energy companies ensure that emergency shutdowns are limited.
Nonetheless, successive waves of attacks have led to a constant shortage in the Ukrainian energy network, so the scheduled shutdowns continue. It would take up to three months for Ukraine to provide a 24-hour electricity supply to consumers if the attacks stopped, and the full recovery of the system would take up to three years, Kharchenko said.
Olena, a pensioner living in Troyeshchyna, a huge bedroom community of apartment blocks on the left bank of the Dnieper River in Kyiv, was affected by rolling blackouts for two weeks in the row. As she tried to get to a “point of invincibility” that was not yet up and running, she said that “there is nothing one can't get used to.”
“Even the apocalypse,” she added when asked about Klitschko’s warning.
Energy expert Andrian Prokip of the Ukrainian Institute of the Future, a Kyiv-based think tank, told RFE/RL that although “full paralysis” of tkrainian infrastructure is not possible, “humanitarian crises on a local scale are possible."
Some areas could lose energy supplies for up to two or three weeks and then lose heating for a long time if water freezes and pipes burst, he said.
This threat loomed in the government-held city of Kramatorsk, near the front lines in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, where the authorities said they would have to drain the water from the heating systems of hundreds of buildings. Similar measures may be necessary for numerous places close to the front.
In early October, a few days before Russia’s massive attacks on Ukraine’s infrastructure started, pensioners Yelyzaveta and Svitlana, who gave only their first names, waited in line for humanitarian aid that was being handed out in the center of Kramatorsk. Both had fled to western Ukraine following the invasion in February but had recently returned.
“There is no place better than home,” Yelyzaveta said, and Svitlana agreed. Asked what they would do if there’s no heat in winter, Yelyzaveta said: “We will see when winter comes, we just managed to get back.”
