Daryna Kulchytska is a mum under pressure. A single parent in a seventh floor flat in Kyiv trying to feed two lively kids and ensure they do their homework. But Daryna also faces the added strain of a deadline she can’t even be certain of.
All she knows is soon the lights will go out, the sockets will lose power, the wi-fi will drop, and the taps will run dry. Tonight, the electricity has kept flowing an hour longer than advertised, but Daryna’s still racing to serve dinner and finish her own work from home.
“The last few days it was only four or five hours we had power, but it’s not at the same times. For two hours we have electricity, then for eight hours we don’t.”
As peace talks continue, with US envoys meeting the Russian and Ukrainian leaders on Thursday, Ukrainians are facing a rolling schedule of planned power cuts because of intensified Russian attacks on their energy grid. Ukraine has responded by striking Russian oil refineries.
Officials are concerned that life will quickly become unsustainable for millions of Ukrainians if power supplies cannot be maintained for at least four hours per day. Some privately warn that’s close already, as some families are living with outages of up to 20 hours in Kyiv.
The power cuts were introduced earlier this year than last winter, and they’re already lasting longer – making homes like Daryna’s darker and colder. She’s wrapped in layers of clothing and a heavy coat – the temperature is dropping, indoors and out.
Just before 7:30pm, there’s a click and that’s it – darkness until dawn.
The lift doesn’t work, the water will stop flowing because electricity is needed to pump it to their flat. So the torches and LED candles come out and Daryna, her son Kyryll and daughter Olena gather for a card game of Uno before an early night.
Twelve-year-old Kyryll, speaking perfect English learned during two years living in the US, is frank about the disruption.
“There’s no light, no water, no heat, no electricity. And no fun. All the fun got sucked out with the electricity,” he says. “We have a lot of board games. We have a whole shelf, but we’ve played them like a hundred thousand times already.”
Many families sit in the shadows as blackouts sweep entire neighbourhoods, smothering homes and streets in darkness.
“You look outside and sometimes you see nothing. You have a big city around but you see nothing because there’s no light,” Daryna says.
Kyiv has been worst hit – its metro trains and trolleybuses at times brought to a standstill. Nationwide, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians have gone without power in recent weeks.
We saw why on a visit to one of Ukraine’s largest power stations, barely standing after a recent ballistic missile strike – the most powerful and devastating attack of Russia’s campaign against Ukrainian energy targets.
Source: www.bbc.co.uk
