Ukrainians in the foreground prepare for a harsh winter

Published on: 31/10/2024 – 08:06

3 minutes

Then a Russian bomb hit, ripping open the windows of the sitting room of his Soviet-era apartment, ripping a hole in the wall and damaging one of only two heating appliances.

Still, the 57-year-old, who was born and raised and lived in the city of Lyman all his life, said he had no plans to spend the frigid winter somewhere more prepared or less dangerous.

“It’s nothing. We will survive. We will fix it. We will do it little by little. The most important thing for me now is to close the windows, turn on the heating and it will be warm again,” says he. told AFP.

Ukraine is preparing for the most difficult winter year of the Russian invasion, which was launched by the Kremlin in February 2022.

This year, waves of drone and missile attacks on Ukraine’s power grid by Russian forces have knocked out about half of the country’s generating capacity, compared with a year earlier.

Kiev officials and analysts have predicted that repairing the damage will take millions of dollars and possibly years.

‘Preparing for winter’

In towns and villages near the front lines where Russian forces are advancing, the daily grind of fighting has destroyed the largely outdated Soviet-era infrastructure that kept residents warm in the frigid winter months.

Surrounded by pine forests, Lyman had a population of about 20,000 before the invasion and was briefly occupied by Russian troops. Authorities say the current population is now less than half that.

Yuri, one of those who remained, said the residents had become accustomed to wartime winters.

“We are all preparing for winter. We have survived two years and will survive the third, don’t worry,” the 71-year-old told AFP, declining to give his surname.

Another Lyman resident prepared for winter and Russian attacks by helping furnish the basement of his building.

“There are curtains. Everything has curtains. There is a stove, a heater – everything is there,” says Viktor Krupko, 71.

If the electricity that powers the basement heaters goes out, Krupko would climb to his fifth-floor apartment — vulnerable to repeated Russian attacks — and light the stove he has there.

“You can’t bring it here and you can’t heat it here. There’s nowhere to put it, and nowhere to take the chimney out,” he said.

He decided to move into the basement after a previous strike damaged his home. His wife has been living in the basement for months.

“Of course people came out, and that was it. No one lives here, just two grandmothers lived there,” he said.

‘Born here, I will die here’

The governor of the Donetsk region, Vadym Filashkin, has said that as a result of the hostilities, more than 130 cities and towns in the industrial area will have no electricity this winter.

Filashkin said that only three major cities in the region, which the Kremlin already claimed to have annexed by 2022, will have heating: Kramatorsk, Sloviansk and Dobropillia.

Despite the threat of more Russian attacks and the fact that his wife has previously suffered a stroke, Krupko has no plans to leave Lyman, no matter how cold or miserable this winter gets.

His daughter moved to neighboring Poland, one of the European Union countries that export electricity to Ukraine, but he worries about how far his meager pension will take him there.

“What will I buy with it?” he said.

Volodymyr, the 57-year-old who previously had a close brush with death, was more fatalistic, describing his determination to stay in the war-battered city.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he told AFP. “I was born here and I’m going to die here.”

© 2024 AFP