It felt like the last day of summer. On a Sunday afternoon in late September, people in Kyiv strolled through the city’s botanical gardens, admiring the late-flowering dahlias. Later, the terraces in the Podil area – a neighbourhood full of bars, patisseries and bookshops – filled up with customers in search of a cocktail.
The idyll was an illusion. As the day darkened, the air defence began its rumble and boom. When a projectile fell with an explosive smack on a bar table, the drinkers flinched and then laughed. It was only a conker from the chestnut tree overhead. Nursing a glass of rosé, writer Myroslav Laiuk talked about the picnic he and his wife had had the previous evening, in a park in the Obolon district – prosecco in proper glasses, cheese and charcuterie. Then a drone was shot down above their heads. Very pretty, he said, with a smile. Shooting stars. Time to make a wish.
Kyiv is no longer the city it was in the summer. Since late August, the Russians have been attacking over and over again in daylight hours, rather than only at night. The crump of air-defence, whine of drones and thunder of explosions are no longer the grim music of the night, but a commonplace waking-hours symphony, disrupting schools and workplaces and threatening life. Warehouses and city petrol stations have been targeted, and at times acrid smoke blurs the clear autumn mornings. Kyiv has become a frontline city. And winter is on the way.
Winter is something to dread in Kyiv. Last year the cold was terrible – temperatures into the minus 20s – and cruelly long-lasting, persisting well into February. Illustrator Sergiy Maidukov was one of many who lost heating in his flat after the Russians attacked power infrastructure, the invaders’ aim seemingly to make the capital unliveable. The indoor temperature dropped to 3C. He kept warm by layering up, but also by going for runs.
“At least for 10 minutes afterwards you felt a like normal person, and you could just wear a T-shirt”, he said. He had a steady gas supply, so he could heat up water in a saucepan for a basic wash afterwards. At intervals he’d get up from his work and dance or do push-ups – not an option for the infirm. As film-maker Iryna Tsilyk put it: “Young and strong people – they will survive every time. But how about all those invisible people that we usually don’t meet?”
Tsilyk’s biggest fear was, she said, the loss of internet connectivity. Lack of water supply would be another nightmare. Maria Shuvalova, an editor in academic publishing, described the period two winters ago when, for several days, the water supply failed both in her flat and in her coworking space. She was drinking tea to keep warm while working, then needing the loo. So she would walk the 20 minutes home, pee in a bottle, then return to the coworking space; then drink more tea, and repeat the whole cycle. For bowel movements, there was a plastic bag, knotted and disposed of in the trash. Such details of life were, she joked, “shit you definitely don’t want to know”.
On a stroll in the botanical gardens, Iryna Gorlach, an international cooperation expert, laughed when asked how she was preparing for the coming cold. She pulled out her phone and showed an Instagram post from a popular Kyiv account. “This winter will be super difficult, we need to prepare properly,” it said. Then three bullet points: “Buy a house in a village; go abroad; stock up on grains and cereals.” Beneath, were the words, “How I’m preparing” and a cartoon image of a panicked-looking dog holding a cross and a copy of the Bible.
Leaving the city is certainly on many people’s minds – if only for a few weeks ata time if things get bad. Nastya Dyakova, chief executive of an online safety charity, has rented a seven-bedroom house in the Carpathian mountains, in far western Ukraine, where staff and their families will be able to stay rent free if the situation in Kyiv becomes practically or psychologically untenable.
“It is not only a question about winter in Kyiv, but about drones,” she said. Since August, the capital has been assailed by new, faster, jet-powered, harder-to-intercept drones. “It’s become really emotionally challenging to stay in Kyiv, and we understood that it’s difficult for our team to work or to focus because they really worry about their safety. So this option in the Carpathians is available for the next six months, until the end of winter.”
The Lukyanivka neighbourhood of central Kyiv has been particularly hard hit this year, with its huge shopping complex and market bombed out and burned in the early summer. Market traders have set up their stalls beside the ruins anyway: one lady, cheerfully presiding over slabs of salo, pork lard, proclaimed that her personal coping mechanism was going to be a plentiful supply of home distilled hooch or horilka. Another stallholder, Halyna, cheerfully selling bouquets of lavender, dahlias and chrysanthemums, was similarly fatalistic. “It will be whatever God sends us,” she said.
Passing the market en route to work was Viktoriia Riabchenko, an accountant. There had been a particularly good harvest this year in her dacha garden, she said, and she had a great stock of ferments: plums, sour cherries, raspberries, tomatoes, cucumbers and sweet peppers. Not that she was especially concerned about the possibility of food shortages if warehouse bombing continued, she said; Russian propaganda exaggerated the potential problem, and specific shortfalls in shops tended to be remedied fast.
Attitudes to winter, of course, depend on one’s perspective and experience. Viktor, a delivery driver was pausing outside Lukyankivka’s branch of MacDonald’s. The plastic golden arches on the side of the building have lately been restored to crispness after the heat from the summer’s bombs and fires slid them into a Dali-like melt. He was used to the cold, outdoors all day on his moped, and, having moved from Kramatorsk in the Donetsk region, had plenty of experience with bangs and explosions. Ivan Onyshchenko, who had dropped by for a hamburger and fries from his nearby workplace, had invested in a generator that he put on his balcony on the fifth floor – a lot of fuel to carry upstairs if the electricity stayed out. Usually generators chug away at high volume; his, he promised, was “only as loud as a hairdryer”.
Shuvalova lives on the 14th floor of her apartment building, and joked that last year she got great thighs walking up the stairs during power outages.
This year will be different though: she and her husband, who is serving in the army, are expecting a baby, and preparing for the winter has been detailed and intense. The couple have plans A, B and C – plan A is to stay in Kyiv, but leaving to stay with friends or family further from the Russian missiles is on the table.
Realising they could not expect the baby to live “like moles” as they did last year – reading by candlelight and working by laptop-screen glow during days-long outages – they have invested in an energy-storage system. The unit is in effect a giant battery, about the size of a small carry-on suitcase, that can keep appliances going for a day or so, if need be. Last winter they were on sale for 160,000 UAH (about £2, 700). Cannily, the couple bought one for about half that during the summer. Shuvalova also opened a drawer to reveal an array of small power banks.
The residents of their apartment block are voting on taking over the running of their own building. If they manage it, they will install a generator to power one of the lifts during power cuts, and a toilet for the bomb shelter – AKA the underground car park. Shuvalova opened cupboards to reveal stashes of water, dried grains, rice, and tinned meat. They have a camping stove and a box full of “dry shower” packs – wipes that, with 50ml of water added, can be used to wash.
In her anti-natal classes, a lot of emphasis is put on breastfeeding, she said. Formula requires clean water and the ability to heat it – not to be taken for granted this winter. “Breastfeeding takes care of all that,” she said. The air-defence roared away as she spoke. People outside Ukraine may question the decision to have a baby in Kyiv under such circumstances. “We couldn’t postpone any more so we just have to adapt,” said Shuvalova. “It’s bringing a lot of meaning to our life, and joy. And pregnancy hormones are very nice. I’m so calm and not stressing at all.”
Whether fatalistic, downhearted, or meticulously prepared, the boundaries of “acceptable” or “ordinary” have been pushed outwards for Kyivans in ways unimaginable to the inhabitants of other European capitals. Only one thing is absolutely certain this unpredictable, dreaded coming winter: that it will end. According to Maidukov, the illustrator, “In the evening when you are already blue and trembling, you’re thinking, ‘OK, one day is behind me, and I need to bear maybe two or three more weeks of this, which is not such a long time’.”
Last winter’s freeze, he said, was a “weird period. Each day I was on the edge, about to fall down with my morale, but I didn’t allow myself to. Because nothing will stop spring. Spring will definitely come.”