Over the past month, Russia has heavily targeted Ukraine’s energy systems in an attempt to freeze civilians into submission this winter. Planned blackouts are increasingly common, occasionally forcing Ukrainians to work by candlelight. A humanitarian crisis is looming, particularly in eastern Ukraine, where the climate is colder and more infrastructure has been destroyed.
In Kharkiv, a city of one million people just under 25 miles from the Russian border, the situation is dire. Bitter winters often see temperatures fall as low as -20 degrees Fahrenheit. 50% of the region’s heating capacity has been destroyed and local officials are frantically trying to preserve what energy infrastructure remains, with repair crews working 24/7 to fix damaged facilities. If prolonged blackouts occur, the plan is to use mobile heaters to establish warming stations where residents can stay safe and cook food. Hospitals have been provided with generators as well. However, should there be a blackout lasting more than a week, the city may have to be temporarily abandoned. Even if enough generators could be brought to sustain one million people, it would be impossible to bring enough fuel to run them. A mass evacuation of this scale, conducted without electricity in the middle of winter, would be disastrous. Those living in surrounding villages would be particularly imperiled – many are seniors who, lacking cars and relatives, wouldn’t have the means to reach the city’s evacuation buses and trains.
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To minimize deaths, Mission Kharkiv, an NGO founded this spring to manage medical aid, has expanded into producing heaters that rely on solid fuels like wood or coal. The heaters are essentially furnaces that can either be plugged into home heating systems or used as fireplaces. In Mission Kharkiv’s warehouse, a small team of volunteer pharmacists processed piles of medical donations while several men diligently welded together heaters. Around them, pieces of cut metal had been neatly stacked. Dozens of freshly-painted heaters were arranged in a corner for delivery. Just beyond the warehouse was a large, undamaged electrical substation – a target. The area was not particularly safe. In the spring, a woman had been killed by shelling. In the summer, a missile had exploded a few hundred feet away, throwing dirt all over the warehouse roof. Still, the volunteers worked tirelessly.
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As Mission Kharkiv founder Rostislav Filippenko put it to me, “If blackouts persist in the winter, lots of people will die. I’m scared. It’s dumb to say otherwise. But you need to survive. You’re living on the edge because you understand that, during this winter, there could be an apocalypse. You know that it can happen, and it definitely will happen if we don’t prepare ourselves.”
In liberated villages further away from Kharkiv, many residents have lived without electricity since the spring. Some have had their water and gas reconnected, but others still collect rainwater in buckets to sustain themselves. It is unclear how these residents, located further away from major population centers, will survive the winter. However, if eastern Ukraine is ultimately evacuated en masse, Europe may face another wave of immigrants.
