Russian strikes push Kyiv toward a winter of power outages

Damaged energy systems and civilian preparations show the strains of repeated blackouts

The lights are failing in Ukraine’s capital as Russian missiles pound power plants, and power cuts have become common. The three million residents of Kyiv are bracing for what The Wall Street Journal described as the worst winter of the nearly five-year-old war. Even the water supply falters at times, subway trains sometimes halt in tunnels during outages, and generators hum on streets that often remain dark.

Zelensky said Russia had carried out more than 170 attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure since President Trump announced the energy ceasefire on Oct. 11. “Russia is clearly taking advantage of the slowdown in air-defense supplies from our partners,” he said.

For months, Ukraine has been chronically short of Patriot interceptors, described as the most effective defense against Russian ballistic missiles, amid a global shortage following the U.S.-Iran war. Russia’s army has struggled in eastern Ukraine this year, achieving only minimal advances at the cost of massive casualties, The Wall Street Journal reported. The report said Moscow’s hopes of conquering Ukraine now hinge on a campaign against Ukrainian cities using missiles and long-range drones aimed at breaking residents’ morale.

Olha Soloviova, a mother of two boys, said her family was determined to stay in Kyiv as long as it could. “We’re making ourselves as comfortable as possible,” she said. The family buys only dairy products it can eat in a day because refrigerator electricity is uncertain, and it has stocked enough drinking water for a month. The family also owns power banks bought during Russia’s previous winter bombing campaigns and small handheld lights for moving around a dark apartment.

Soloviova was considering buying a Starlink terminal to maintain connectivity. The Wall Street Journal reported that limits on the Ukrainian military’s use of Starlink terminals came on the orders of SpaceX founder Elon Musk, while Ukraine continued to rely on the company for civilian connections. “If we had a choice, we wouldn’t buy Starlink, because I find the company’s and its owner’s behavior completely unacceptable,” Soloviova said. “But staying in touch with my family and having up-to-date information on enemy targets flying over Ukraine is a higher priority.”

Soloviova also regularly hears explosions when Russia targets a nearby power plant. She struggles to sleep and began seeing a therapist two months ago. “I was really exhausted and realized that without support, without outside help, it would be very difficult emotionally and psychologically to get through this fall and winter,” she said.

Kyiv is bearing a more intense bombardment this year because its energy infrastructure has suffered enormous cumulative damage over years of war, said Oleksandr Kharchenko, director of the Energy Industry Research Center. Last year, Russia did lasting damage to the city’s power-generation capacity, he said. He said, “This winter will be a cycle of power outages, emergency repairs, restoration,” and more outages.

So far, Russia’s intensifying bombardment has not broken Ukrainian society’s will to resist. Surveys show Ukrainians are not becoming more willing to surrender and accept Russian President Vladimir Putin’s terms, which The Wall Street Journal said would dismember and subjugate the country. Most Kyiv residents say they are ready to endure the war as long as it takes to stop Russia, opinion polls show. At the same time, the number of dead and wounded civilians has climbed sharply this year, particularly in the past two months.

A growing number of people are moving to western Ukraine in search of greater safety. Ilona Shemrai, a mother of two young children, plans to leave Kyiv this week for Ivano-Frankivsk. “The main factor was the children’s psychological and mental well-being,” she said.

Her children had become frightened of sleeping in their beds and asked to sleep in the corridor for safety amid Russia’s nonstop drone attacks on Kyiv. Shemrai said she decided to leave when her 4-year-old daughter, born during the war, asked: “Mom, is a missile going to hit us? Are we going to survive?”

The number of empty apartments available for rent in Kyiv has risen by nearly two-thirds since August, according to Ukrainian real-estate website Lun. In western Ukrainian cities, rents are rising as available apartments dwindle, Lun’s data shows. Shemrai also struggled to secure kindergarten places for her children in Ivano-Frankivsk. But nowhere is completely safe from Russia’s missiles and long-range drones: the Ivano-Frankivsk region’s energy infrastructure was attacked Tuesday. Shemrai plans to buy a diesel-powered generator for her new home and use a nearby well as a backup water supply.