Life Without Electricity, Heating, and Water: Kyiv After Repeated Attacks on Energy Infrastructure

A photo from an apartment building in Kyiv shows frozen walls, dark stairwells, and a thermometer reading –6°C inside a home.
This is not an abandoned city. It is daily life in the capital of a European country in 2026.

Due to constant missile and drone attacks by Russia, Kyiv’s power grids have been repeatedly damaged. Electricity is available only for limited hours - or not at all. Without electricity, heating and water systems fail as well.

In districts without stable heating, pipes and radiators burst. Walls and staircases freeze through. At times, it is impossible to get plumbers to release air from heating systems — emergency services are overstretched or lack power themselves.

In some apartments, residents are forced to pour water leaking from radiators directly out of their windows to prevent flooding.
In others, temperatures drop to +5°C if there is no gas supply. Those with gas stoves are considered “lucky”: cooking and baking can raise indoor temperatures to around +12°C.

After another attack on energy infrastructure, all electric public transport on Kyiv’s right bank has been suspended - no trams, no trolleybuses. The city is paralysed not only by cold, but by the loss of basic mobility.

Living conditions in parts of Kyiv have become virtually uninhabitable. Yet for most people, there is nowhere else to go.
Shops have begun allowing animals inside to warm up - a quiet but powerful symbol of this winter.

What Russia is doing to Ukrainians goes beyond shelling.
It is a deliberate attempt to break civilians through cold, by stripping people of electricity, heating, and water.
This is energy terror - and a form of genocidal practice aimed at survival itself.

And still, Kyiv endures. People support each other. Electricity returns for hours. Warmth comes in fragments.
But each such winter leaves deep scars - in bodies, minds, and memory.