In the bitter cold of January 2026, a woman pulls a child on a sled past emergency heating and power tents in Kyiv, Ukraine. This stark scene unfolds following relentless Russian attacks on the nation's critical infrastructure, transforming the harsh eastern European winter into a deliberate instrument of terror against civilian populations.
The Chilling Echoes of Sarajevo
As an experienced war correspondent, I have witnessed this brutal strategy before. During the siege of Sarajevo in the winter of 1993, people burned books and furniture for warmth as water froze in pipes and electricity vanished completely. Children slept in coats and hats, their breath visible in dark rooms, while doctors operated by candlelight or wearing camping headlamps.
I recall elderly residents chopping wood in city parks until no trees remained, then dragging it home on sledges. The ground became too frozen to bury the dead on football pitches that later became cemeteries. On one terrible frozen day at an old people's home near a frontline, I counted body after body, all frozen in their sleep. Cold itself became a weapon of war.
Kyiv's Modern Winter War
Three decades later, I am witnessing another winter war in Ukraine – this time a human-made catastrophe of systematic proportions. Russia has been deliberately targeting the country's energy infrastructure since last mid-autumn, with attacks on power and heating systems across eastern, central and southern regions including Kyiv, Odesa and Kharkiv.
These assaults have forced daily electricity outages that followed a grim rhythm until December: four hours on, four hours off, throughout day and night. This meant just twelve hours of light and warmth against twelve hours of darkness and penetrating cold.
The Infrastructure Toll
According to Ukraine's minister of economy, Oleksii Sobolev, the total damage to energy infrastructure from these attacks over the past three months will cost an estimated $1 billion to address. Yet no statistic can adequately capture what it means to live in a city where winter has been deliberately weaponised against civilian populations.
The attacks have followed a devastating pattern. On 9 January 2026, a massive strike on Kyiv's energy grid left 6,000 residential buildings – approximately half of the city's housing supply – without heating. Just eleven days later on 20 January, another attack cut power from more than 5,600 buildings, many of them the same structures affected previously. On 24 January, these neighbourhoods were hit yet again, with 6,000 buildings losing heating and 3,200 remaining without as night fell.
Life in the Deep Freeze
This infrastructure destruction occurs as temperatures in Kyiv plummet to between -15°C (5°F) and -18°C, dropping to -20°C at night. During a recent Zoom call with human rights lawyer and Nobel peace prize winner Oleksandra Matviichuk, she sat wrapped in a parka and scarves, refusing to complain about the conditions. "It's not your fault," she said when I apologised, embarrassed that my colleagues at The Reckoning Project are suffering so valiantly.
Another colleague, Maksimas Milta, lives in Podil, one of Kyiv's oldest neighbourhoods. In one week during January, he endured 98 hours without electricity out of 168 total hours. The following week brought 99 hours without power. Yet he continued working every day, refusing to complain. This represents not merely temporary disruption but a siege by alternative means.
Heroism and Desperation
People will someday recall these terrible stories. On 21 January, Oleksii Brekht, former acting CEO of Ukraine's electricity transmission operator, was killed while working at a damaged substation. In Dnipro, emergency service divers enter the freezing Dnipro River, working for hours in sub-zero temperatures to repair heating pipelines. This demonstrates both heroism and desperation as people literally freeze to death and must take extraordinary measures to survive.
Ukrainians have begun calling this reality "kholodomor" – death by cold – echoing the Holodomor, the human-made famine Stalin used to crush Ukraine in the 1930s. Where hunger served as the weapon then, winter has become the instrument now.
Adapting to Arctic Conditions
Inside apartments across Ukraine, people have developed ingenious survival methods:
- Heating bricks on gas stoves to use as makeshift radiators
- Pitching hiking tents in living rooms and sheltering inside them wearing thermal clothes and sleeping bags
- Schools in Kyiv extending holidays until February due to unheated classrooms
- Children elsewhere returning to online learning because physical classrooms are too cold
One of the cruellest consequences involves military veterans with bionic prosthetics who cannot recharge their limbs without electricity. Yet amid this suffering engineered by Vladimir Putin, something extraordinary persists. People continue their daily lives, refusing to be broken by Moscow's tactics.
Defiance in Darkness
Future generations will also tell stories of remarkable resilience:
- Supermarkets allowing stray dogs and cats inside to keep warm
- Young people organising generator-powered raves in courtyards, dancing in darkness as acts of defiance
- Communities maintaining humour and solidarity despite nearly constant siege conditions
This defiance has become Ukraine's trademark – a fierce rebellion against Russian aggression that echoes my experiences in Sarajevo. I remember bars heated with open gas pipes that flamed dangerously as patrons ordered black market whisky, laughter at underground parties in bomb shelters, and the heartbreaking strength required to burn a six-year PhD thesis to heat a room so family members could survive.
The Psychological Warfare Dimension
We must acknowledge the full scope of Putin's strategy. The purpose extends beyond physical destruction to encompass psychological warfare. The Kremlin hopes civilians will eventually break under these conditions, potentially turning against their own government in desperation.
During the Bosnian war, the international community failed to stop the siege, resulting in 100,000 deaths that might have been prevented. We declared "never again" yet looked away when confronted with similar atrocities.
In Ukraine today, winter serves as a weapon as deadly as the drones that buzz through frozen night skies seeking their targets. The world must finally recognise this strategy for what it represents: a calculated war crime that weaponises climate against civilian populations. As temperatures continue to plummet and infrastructure remains under attack, the international community faces a moral imperative to respond with more than words.
