Daryna Kulchytska times dinner by the clock on her kitchen wall, racing to feed her two children before the power in her seventh-floor Kyiv flat cuts out for the night. Lately the electricity has been running four or five hours a day, at no fixed time, as Russia's intensified bombardment of Ukraine's energy grid pushes the country's winter blackout schedule toward what officials privately admit is close to unsustainable.
"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."
Daryna Kulchytska, Kyiv resident
Ukrainian officials say life becomes unworkable for millions if supply falls below roughly four hours a day; some privately say parts of Kyiv are already there, with outages stretching up to 20 hours in the hardest-hit neighbourhoods. The cuts began earlier this year than last winter and are lasting longer, at times stopping the capital's metro trains and trolleybuses outright.
A second straight night of strikes
The latest blow came overnight Wednesday, when Russian strikes hit six major substations in Ukraine's Vinnytsia, Kirovohrad, Zhytomyr and Cherkasy regions, with additional damage to power lines in Kirovohrad and Rivne, according to Ukrainian officials. It was the second consecutive night of attacks on major energy infrastructure. "As a result of the Russian attack, energy infrastructure was damaged, causing emergency power outages in the Shepetivka district," Khmelnytskyi Oblast Governor Serhii Tiurin said. Grid operator Ukrenergo reported outages reaching consumers as far afield as Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhzhia, Kharkiv, Odesa and Chernihiv. Kyiv's city utility said it would start switching off municipal streetlights overnight to conserve power for hospitals and other essential services; a separate strike on a district heating plant in Kryvyi Rih cut heat to residential blocks there.
For Daryna's 12-year-old son Kyryll, who learned fluent English during two years living in the United States, the toll is measured in smaller losses. "There's no light, no water, no heat, no electricity. And no fun. All the fun got sucked out with the electricity," he said. "We have a whole shelf of board games, but we've played them like a hundred thousand times already."
Talks continue, strikes don't stop
The intensified bombardment comes just as diplomacy over ending the war edges forward. Two days of US-mediated talks among Ukrainian, Russian and American officials in Abu Dhabi ended Wednesday without what negotiators called a meaningful breakthrough, and American envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner travelled on to Moscow, Russian state media reported, before a planned debrief with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Ireland. Kyiv, meanwhile, has responded to the energy campaign by striking Russian oil refineries. With temperatures dropping and repair crews racing to patch the damage before nightfall, Ukrainian officials say the coming weeks will determine whether this winter repeats, or exceeds, the hardships of the last.
