Bonfires, dancing, pets: How Ukrainians are staying warm during the toughest winter in years

By Daria Tarasova-Markina, Svitlana Vlasova, Ivana Kottasová, CNN

Kyiv (CNN) — Kateryna Skurydina goes to bed wearing thermal underwear, two jumpers and a scarf. She covers herself with a down duvet and two blankets. But her secret weapon is her cat, Pushok.

“He has a high body temperature. So he’s like a hot water bottle,” she told CNN.

The heating in Skurydina’s Kyiv apartment has been mostly off since Russia launched a massive attack on the city’s energy infrastructure on January 8, leaving hundreds of thousands of households, businesses and schools in the capital without power.

Temperatures have dropped as low as –19 degrees Celsius (–2.2 degrees Fahrenheit) this week, and officials say the timing of Russia’s strikes – in the middle of what the prime minister called the harshest winter in 20 years – is no coincidence.

Like most Ukrainians, Skurydina is now used to living with constant power outages. She has multiple power banks and blackout-proof gadgets. Her apartment is full of artificial USB-powered candles, Christmas lights, and camping lanterns.

The cold, though, is new.

The temperature inside her building has been as low as 10 degrees Celsius (50 degrees Fahrenheit) in the past few days, a full eight degrees below the indoor temperature that the World Health Organization recommends as healthy.

“It’s very difficult mentally. Now that I’ve lost my heating, I’ve realized that I don’t really need electricity that much. When you have heating but no electricity, everything is fine,” she said, pointing to her habit of turning to exercise to boost her mood during the blackouts.

“Sport keeps me going. I go to a gym which runs on eco-fuel. (But) yesterday, they even (shut) the gym because there is no heating and it is very cold. You can’t go anywhere.”

State of emergency

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky declared a state of emergency for the country’s energy sector on Wednesday, admitting that the consequences of the Russian strikes and the extremely low temperatures were very severe.

Kyiv’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, said that 300 multi-story buildings in the capital remained without heating as of Thursday, down from the 6,000 that had no heat supply after the massive attack a week earlier.

While Kyiv has been the worst affected, emergency power outages have been reported across the country.

Ukrainian officials said Wednesday that a large-scale Russian attack on Kryvyi Rih, Zelensky’s hometown in central Ukraine, had left tens of thousands of people without power. Major outages were also reported in Dnipro in southeastern Ukraine. On Thursday, attacks knocked out power in Zhytomyr in the west and Kharkiv in northeast, according to Ukraine’s Ministry of Energy.

Many schools have shut, unable to heat up classrooms to safe temperatures. Shops, cafes and restaurants that could normally provide some respite to residents looking for warmth and a power supply have also been forced to close.

It has been so cold this week that some diesel power generators – vital to keep the lights on when supply from the grid is cut off – have stopped working.

Authorities in Kyiv and elsewhere across the country have been operating hundreds of “invincibility points” where local people can get warm, charge their devices and work. Zelensky said on Wednesday that more of these would open.

Iryna Palandina, who came to one of the help points in Kyiv on Thursday, told CNN she had no electricity, no water supply and no way to cook food at home.

“We came to drink tea because I don’t even have anything to heat water with,” she said. “After the last attack, it became so difficult. Before that, we were more or less (managing). I always thought that our family was prepared, we have an inverter, uninterruptible power supplies, batteries… but when there is only two hours of electricity a day, they just run out of power and don’t have time to recharge,” she added.

On social media, Kyiv residents who have more hours of light are actively offering their help to those who don’t. And in some residential complexes during blackouts, neighbors gather in the courtyards to cook food together on a bonfire and socialize. Videos are spreading on social media showing people grilling meat, drinking hot beverages and dancing to keep warm.

Russia has consistently denied striking civilian infrastructure, despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) released data on Thursday, showing that there have been at least 256 Russian airstrikes on energy facilities and heat supply systems across Ukraine since the beginning of the heating season in October.

It said the figures show that the strikes are “aimed at destroying the Ukrainian people and constitute crimes against humanity.”

Ukraine’s energy minister said Friday that there was not a single power plant left in the country that hadn’t been hit by Russian forces during the war.

International organizations and Ukraine’s allies have condemned Russia for targeting Ukraine’s energy facilities.

‘A very resilient nation’

Serhiy Salata is the owner of “Ї’м Salata,” a company that grows lettuce and other produce in specialized indoor vertical farms in Kyiv. For the plants to survive, Salata needs the temperature, light and amount of CO2 in the air to be as consistent as possible – a difficult endeavor when unexpected power cuts are a constant threat.

The company has solar panels and a generator to power the most vital parts of the system, but it is still partially reliant on power supply from the grid.

“The conditions force us to constantly experiment,” he said. “For example, I need to calculate the temperature in the room in such a way that if the lights are turned off for four hours, the temperature will not drop below the critical level.”

Sitting in her freezing cold flat, Skurydina has turned to internet shopping to beat the cold, ordering an electric blanket and two hot water bottles.

“In a moment of desperation, when it was very cold, I ordered everything I saw. Everything I liked,” she said, pointing to a contraption made of a clay pot and several tea lights. “It works like a fireplace for your hands. It doesn’t actually heat the room, but if you’re sitting next to it at your computer, it makes you a little warmer,” she said.

Her cat Pushok, meanwhile, has taken to eating soup. “Maybe because it’s warm? He (normally) hates it. But he started eating it little by little,” she said. The cat’s name translates as “Fluffy” – ironic, given he is a Sphynx and has no hair.

“When the coronavirus hit, it seemed like the coronavirus was the worst thing ever. Then it seemed that the worst thing was shelling, then that there was no electricity. I think we will be a very resilient nation,” Skurydina said, stroking Pushok in his sweater.

“I already know how to live without electricity, without heat, under shelling. Any everyday problems will be solved much more easily. I’ll be that grandmother who always has, I hope, a charged power bank just in case, a pack of candles, some freeze-dried food, and everything running on batteries or USB.”

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