KYIV -- Some are stockpiling firewood and candles. Others are buying country homes to escape from a city under bombardment. Buildings are racing to install extra power sources. Portable generators are selling briskly. Officials are considering pontoon bridges across the Dnieper River. Even a tunnel underneath.
Russia's aerial campaign to pummel Ukraine into submission is increasing in intensity and ferocity; on October 14, much of Kyiv plunged into darkness as Moscow launched missiles and drones at the Ukrainian capital for a second straight night.
Now, Ukrainians are bracing for what many fear could be the worst winter since the start of the full-scale invasion in February 2022.
On the front lines, Ukraine’s dogged fight has ground Russian forces to a virtual standstill; in recent months, Kyiv's forces pulled off a surprising counteroffensive that has resulted in a major, albeit localized, shift on the battlefield.
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Russia’s Jet-Powered Shahed Drones Pose New Threat To Ukraine
But its ability to fend off legions of jet-powered drones, cruise and ballistic missiles, and even slower propeller-driven drones, is increasingly stretched thin with the sheer number of Russian weapons ripping through the air -- and into Ukrainian buildings and bridges.
And the biggest single source of weaponry for Ukraine, the United States, has slowed many of its deliveries -- most crucially, interceptors for the Patriot missile system.
“The realistic scenario is that we could see a repeat of last winter. That means strikes on heat and utility infrastructure,” Oleh Popenko, who heads the Union of Utility Services Consumers of Ukraine, told Current Time. “We are absolutely not protected against this, and no one is.”
A man removes snow from a restaurant terrace in Kyiv in January.
Basement Bomb Shelter
Ukrainians officials have struggled to respond to the loss of US interceptor missiles; European allies have supplied some, but not in adequate numbers, officials say.
The US-built system is the only proven defense against high-speed hypersonic and ballistic missiles. US stockpiles have dropped to dangerously low levels as many of those interceptors were diverted to the Middle East to defend against Iranian attacks in the war that began in late February.
Officials in Kyiv also fear the loss of advance intelligence: warnings of Russian missile launches, something provided largely by the Americans. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on October 13 that, for a second night in a row, Kyiv had not received any warning from Western allies.
“It's not a question: Will they be targeting data centers or gas stations? They will be targeting everything.”
Adding to Kyiv’s worries: US President Donald Trump’s announcement last week of an “energy cease-fire” between Russia and Ukraine, which caught Kyiv off guard and which Zelenskyy says Russia has violated repeatedly. Trump, whose approval ratings have plummeted amid soaring diesel and gasoline prices, demanded that Ukraine stop attacking Russian refineries and said the US would be importing Russian diesel fuel.
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko and Zelenskyy’s government have traded blame over the pace of preparations in Kyiv and the surrounding region for the winter.
Average Ukrainians, meanwhile, are doing what they can to prepare.
Vitaliy Kupchak, who heads a condominium association for an apartment building in Kyiv’s Solomyanskiy district, said the association had levied an extra charge on residents and used the funds to build a small shelter in a basement space that used to be a “dump.”
“Within about a month, everything was cleaned out, the walls and floor were painted, and people contributed whatever they could. Someone gave a sofa, someone gave a little bed,” he told RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service during a recent tour.
“When there are air raid alerts, people sometimes spend the night here. As you can see, there aren't many sleeping places, so people bring their own mats and sleeping bags and can simply lay them out on the floor here and sleep.”
Damage from a Russian strike on the Northern Bridge in Kyiv on October 4
In recent weeks, Russia has launched multiple attacks on bridges spanning the Dnieper, which splits the Ukrainian capital. The city’s main government buildings, and much of the city’s population, are on the west bank, but the east bank is home to a sizable number of residents as well: about 40 percent of the urban population.
Lyudmyla Petrovna, who lives in a high-rise apartment on the east bank of the Dnieper, recalled how she struggled to get through last year’s Russian barrages -- and the heating outages.
She had already stashed away 5-liter bottles of drinking water in her hallways, and she had gotten an alcohol burner for her electric stove, in case the power is cut. She had packets of instant soup stacked up in cardboard boxes.
“Here's a hand warmer. Socks. A power bank,” she told Current Time during a recent visit to her home, giving only her first name and patronymic.
A power generator outside a central Kyiv restaurant during blackout hours (file photo)
She was praying for a warmer winter, she said, citing Ukrainian village folklore that says if onions this season have no skin, the weather should not be so harsh.
A growing number of Kyiv residents are snapping up country homes outside the city, if they can afford it, hoping to hunker down and avoid the worst of any coming Russian onslaught.
Olena, who asked to be identified only by her first name, recently bought a house with a garden about 100 kilometers south of Kyiv. She doesn’t have to commute, which makes the transition easier. She said the main rooms have individual gas heaters, so she won’t be reliant on municipal heat.
"The first thing we did was put in firewood. Oak. 3,500 hryvnyas ($78) per cubic meter ($80 per square foot), and we bought six [cubic meters] in total," she said.
Others don't want to leave -- or have little choice.
“There’s simply nowhere to go, that’s all. So, I’m not planning on it,” one man told RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service. “I suppose if I had a place to go, I’d plan for it, but as it stands -- no.”
Bridge To Spring
Earlier this month, Russian drone strikes hit Kyiv’s Southern and Northern bridges, prompting authorities to shut or restrict traffic on those and other spans. The measures sparked major jams, tangling public transit and snarling travel citywide. Some residents resorted to crossing on foot.
Government officials are now discussing preparing temporary pontoon bridges in case the existing spans are damaged beyond short-term repair. That temporary fix is even more challenging given that the Dnieper can freeze over in cold winters.
Mykola Kalashnyk, the national transport minister, also said that a tunnel under the Dnieper was also under consideration.
Workers at a Ukrainian thermal power plant hit by a Russian strike in Novermber 2024
Like many cities that expanded quickly during the Soviet era, much of Kyiv’s heating infrastructure is centralized in massive boiler plants that heat thousands of homes.
Ukrainian authorities have raced to decentralize that system, building smaller boilers, but experts say the move is behind schedule.
"If the enemy destroys three large [municipal heating plants] then approximately 1.5 million residents could be left without heat," said Volodymyr Omelchenko, director of energy programs at the Razumkov Center, a Kyiv think tank.
Klitschko said he would not order the city evacuated but he repeated calls for residents to leave the capital temporarily if they can.
"No matter how well we prepare, if air defense does not work, we could end up in a bad scenario,” he told Agence-France Presse.
'They Will Be Targeting Everything'
The Russian strategy of targeting Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure dates back to the first full winter of the war, when the Kremlin realized that Russian forces would not simply roll over Ukrainian defenses, as many in Moscow predicted.
Later in 2022, Putin tapped a general known for his ruthless command during the Syrian war to oversee a systematic campaign to pummel civilian infrastructure such as power plants and the electricity grid. In 2024, the International Criminal Court filed charges against two top Russian commanders for their role in the air strike campaign.
Since then, Ukraine has raced to bolster its defense, shore up its power grid, and help Ukrainians to get through bitter winters. Last winter was particularly brutal.
Ahead of the fifth full winter of the all-out war, a Russian document that Ukraine says it intercepted provides a potential blueprint for a campaign to cut power in Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Odesa by as much as 90 percent and also sharply curtail supplies of electricity, heat, and water in big cities nationwide, as well as hitting sewage systems.
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Exclusive: A Russian Blueprint For A Cold, Dark Winter In UkraineThe document -- a copy of which Schemes, the investigative unit of RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service, obtained from sources in Ukraine's defense forces -- identifies 60 “key targets” including stations that transmit electricity from the three operating nuclear power plants under Ukraine’s control, 10 hydroelectric power plants, and other facilities.
A Ukrainian Academy of Sciences building in central Kyiv burns after a Russian drone strike on September 28
In addition to power plants and other infrastructure, the document indicates that one aim would be to disable substations, transmission lines, and interconnectors near the western border through which electricity is imported from Europe and distributed deeper in Ukraine.
“The Russians will try to hit Ukraine in the most vulnerable spots...no matter how well Ukrainians are prepared…. Whatever is the vulnerability, be ready to protect it,” said Kateryna Shynkaruk, a Ukrainian scholar at the Bush School of Government and Public Service in Washington, D.C.
“It's not a question: Will they be targeting data centers or gas stations?” she said in a podcast with the Center for a New American Security. "They will be targeting everything.”