Valentyna Ivanivna showed off her new head torch. It was a present from her grandson, she said. Most evenings she wears it while doing household chores: cooking dinner, washing up and stacking plates. “It’s impossible to plan anything without power. You can’t even invite people round for a cup of tea because the kettle won’t work. It’s stressful and exhausting for everyone,” she explained.
Ivanivna lives in Chernihiv, an ancient Ukrainian city known for its early medieval cathedrals. The border with Belarus and Russia is a short drive away, across a landscape of pine forests, villages with geese and the occasional wandering moose. In 2022, Russian troops invaded and occupied most of the oblast. They bombed and laid siege to Chernihiv, pulling out after six weeks and rolling north.
Over the autumn, Russia’s war dramatically returned in the shape of thousands of killer drones. The Kremlin has launched a determined attempt to plunge the whole of Ukraine into darkness, stepping up an existing campaign of mass destruction. It has targeted thermal power plants, substations and rescue workers as they battle to save the electricity network from one aerial attack after another.
Loop of Valentyna Ivanivna showing off her head torch and people sitting and talking at the invincibility pointValentyna Ivanivna shows off her head torch at the invincibility point
Ukraine is now facing its coldest and most difficult winter since 2022. Blackouts have become a part of everyday life, not just in far-flung hamlets but in the capital, Kyiv, as well. In an interview this month between the Guardian and Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the lights failed in the president’s palace. Cafes, restaurants and shops function as best as they can, against a noisy hum from pavement generators.
Chernihiv is the worst-affected region, together with Sumy and Kharkiv, which also border Russia. “We are without power for 14 hours a day. Today it went off at 5.30am, came back at 10.30am and disappeared at 13.30. Some districts have no power at all,” Ivanivna said. During blackouts the lift in her nine-storey apartment building doesn’t work. Nor does the electric pump that supplies water. “There’s [no water] above the fourth floor,” she said.
She and her friend Liudmyla Mykolayivna are regular visitors to an “invincibility point” – a warm tent located in a shopping centre car park. It offers power sockets, Starlink internet and tea and coffee. Mykolayivna, a 68-year-old pensioner, plugged her phone into an extension cable and logged on to TikTok. As well as social media, she said she enjoyed novels and detective stories, reading them with a torch at home while sitting in the enveloping dark.
Adam Davidenko, a 33-year-old courier, said: “Russia is a terrorist country. They can’t defeat us militarily, so they decided to kill us with cold and to leave us without baths.” He said the electricity company had switched off the connection in his flat, which he shares with two cats, because he was too poor to pay the bill. “I was unemployed for a long time. We survive. We don’t live. I burn firewood to stay warm. I sometimes think about suicide,” he said.
Bike courier Adam Davidenko: ‘We survive. We don’t live.’ Photograph: Alessio Mamo/The Guardian
Two weeks ago, the Russians destroyed one of Chernihiv oblast’s last generation units. The regional power company, Chernihivoblenergo, had built two protective walls, made from concrete and sand, around the 110kW substation. There was, however, no roof. It would have been impractical to construct one, and there was no time or money to build a new facility underground.
Over three days, Russian Shahed drones dive-bombed the complex. A Russian spy drone captured the moment one of its two transformers exploded, sending flames high into a night sky; the footage appeared on Telegram. Attempts by Ukrainian soldiers to shoot down subsequent drones using small arms fire were unsuccessful. Meanwhile, strike drones killed two workers as they drove from another damaged site.
Video of the drone attack on the electricity substationRussian video of the drone attack on the electricity substation
“The Russians are trying to make a total blackout for the civilian population. There’s nothing military here. It’s deliberate genocide against peaceful people,” Serhii Pereverz, the firm’s deputy director, said. The facility was beyond repair, he admitted, walking between twisted relay cables and a burnt-out metal shell. Smoke puffed from a second transformer; oil continued to burn. Nearby was a 2 metre-deep crater, gouged into soft sandy earth.
Lying on the grass was wreckage from numerous Russian drones. All were Geran-2s, a model originally made in Iran and now produced by Russia. The name was printed in bright yellow letters on a piece of tailfin, together with the serial number 2441. Pereverz said he and his colleagues were doing everything they could to keep the lights switched on. “We do repair work so the electricity supply continues. Sometimes our methods are quite cunning. We are cleverer than the Russians. Most of our customers understand [why their power doesn’t work]. A few don’t.”
Serhii Pereverz at an electricity substation destroyed by a three-day drone attack. Photograph: Alessio Mamo/The Guardian
At Chernihiv’s hospital No 2, the director, Vladyslav Kukhar, said non-urgent operations were frequently cancelled because of an absence of power. Kukhar said the building relied on a generator and a large backup battery. He had himself bought four power banks. “This situation weighs on the soul. There’s a psychological and emotional cost. Our doctors and nurses are people too, who live in the city. They have to put up with everything,” he said.
The hospital director Vladyslav Kukhar: ‘The situation weighs on the soul.’ Photograph: Alessio Mamo/The Guardian
Public anger over the lack of electricity has grown amid a major government corruption scandal. Earlier this month, detectives arrived at the Kyiv apartment of Zelenskyy’s friend and former business partner Timur Mindich. Mindich had left hours earlier, escaping to Poland, amid claims that he organised a large-scale bribery scheme featuring the state nuclear agency Energoatom. Other alleged beneficiaries included ministers – two of whom have resigned – and senior officials.
Andriy Podverbnyi, a Chernihiv journalist, said local residents were angry at the revelations. “Corruption has always been a problem in post-Soviet countries. Even so, the news was an unpleasant surprise. For the guys on the frontline and for those living with no or little power, it’s like a knife in the back,” he said. He added: “The scheme was primitive. The people involved were clearly confident they wouldn’t get caught.”
Podverbnyi walked though the city’s main alleyway, decorated with photos of fallen soldiers who had died fighting Russia. He said many young people had left Chernihiv, reducing its prewar population of 280,000. “Despite everything, I’m an optimist. We’ve been through German, Soviet and Russian occupation. The Germans burnt down my grandmother’s village. We are strong and resilient. The Russians won’t succeed in breaking us,” he said.
Local journalist Andrii Podverbnyi: ‘Despite everything, I’m an optimist.’ Photograph: Alessio Mamo/The Guardian
The situation is perhaps hardest for families with children. Anna Kulieva said she and her husband, Maksym, worried about their seven-year-old daughter Yeseniia, especially when bombs fell. “We’ve got used to everything apart from the absence of the lift, since we live on the eighth floor. In general, 2022 was worse. So no complaints. We worry about our child’s education when there’s no electricity,” she said.
Kulieva pottered around her tiny two-room home wearing a head torch; an LED light illuminated the kitchen table and Yeseniia’s classwork. “You can’t bathe your child. Or clean your apartment. Children go to school, but there are a lot of air raids and Shaheds. The power goes off and they sit in the dark for a few hours. But they don’t get a quality education under these conditions. We hope it will improve,” Kulieva said.
Parents, daughter and dog at the dinner table lit by an LED lamp. Yesennia hugs her motherAnna Kulieva with husband Maksym and daughter Yeseniia at the dinner table lit by an LED lamp
The neighbourhood beyond the family’s tower block was shrouded in blackness. Portable lamps in other apartments threw out dainty rectangles of light. The baroque golden domes of St Catherine’s church – built in the 17th century to commemorate a Cossack victory over the Ottomans – were dimly visible in the grey distance. A collar attached to a dog, out with its owner, appeared as a red crescent bouncing in the street below.
Chernihiv in darkness lit only by the headlights of passing cars on the streetChernihiv in darkness
Kulieva said her family did not intend to leave, despite the war and the fact the Russians next door – once regarded as “brothers” – had betrayed Ukraine. “People here are amazing. There’s incredible unity. The more time you spend in this community, the more you value people around you,” she said. She added: “I believe we will overcome our economic and political problems. The most important thing is to stay human. And to carry on raising our children in this spirit.
“It’s not hard to live without a light in your home. It’s hard to live without a light in your heart.”