Ukrainians are bracing for worst wartime winter of airstrikes

Ukrainians are already drawing up contingency plans for what threatens to be the worst wartime winter yet.

Under near-constant attack since Russia’s invasion of February 2022, residents are well-versed in getting through cold periods during airstrikes and regular blackouts. But last winter’s prolonged subzero temperatures brought a new level of hardship as a result of weekslong disruptions to heating, water and sewage services in major cities including Kyiv.

With the trauma of that experience still fresh, coupled with Russia’s increasingly sophisticated drones and a critical shortage of interceptors, many are bracing for what’s to come. Some are considering relocating or even moving abroad. Others are stocking up on firewood or buying equipment and clothing to help cope.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said it would be the most critical moment of the war to date. Ukraine’s new premier, Sergii Koretskyi, acknowledges the scale of the challenge, saying that the government is assuming the worst possible conditions in its planning.

“The one thing I’m not counting on is milder weather,” he said in an interview in Kyiv this month.

The former Soviet country’s Achilles heel is centralized heating that predominates in its cities. These systems rely on fixed infrastructure such as combined heating and power plants that pump hot water through networks of pipes to multistory residential buildings.

Should a major facility be damaged, whole districts can be left without heating. And if quick restoration isn’t possible, systems may have to be drained to prevent water from freezing and pipes from bursting, prolonging the misery during periods of extreme cold.

It’s what happened last winter in the Troeshchyna district of Kyiv, where hundreds of thousands of residents endured heating outages on top of disruptions to electricity and water supply as temperatures dropped below -20 C.

This time, Anna Storozh, a 35-year-old sales manager at a professional sportswear store, has chosen to move.

Workers unfreeze pipes during emergency work on a heating station, following Russian strikes in Kyiv in February. | BLOOMBERG

Together with her husband and daughter, she’s already left their two-bedroom apartment in a nine-story building in Kyiv’s left bank for a house in Vita-Lytovska, a village about 30 kilometers outside the capital. The house once belonged to her late parents-in-law and, although it’s undergoing construction, it has the bonus of a wood-burning stove.

“I can live without electricity — no problem,” she said. “But everyone has their own pain threshold, and mine begins where the heating ends.”

She’s not alone: Panic buying has driven up the price of firewood roughly 70-80% since last year, she said.

Marine Abramian, a 34-year-old campaign coordinator at Greenpeace Ukraine, considered renting or even buying an old house with a wood-burning stove somewhere outside Kyiv. She decided against it on security grounds, fearing unpredictable air attacks or even another offensive from the north, as happened in early 2022.

This is the third time war has upended Abramian’s life. In 1995, her Armenian family moved from Stepanakert in the Nagorno-Karabakh region after the first phase of the Armenia-Azerbaijan war, and settled in the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk.

In 2014, Russian-backed separatists proclaimed a self-styled republic there, and Abramian was forced to flee again. Before moving, she experienced a weeklong disruption to the water supply due to fighting near Donetsk.

“Being without water is terrible; I think it’s probably the worst thing,” Abramian said.

In the capital that threat materialized last winter, when many residents faced multiday disruptions to water.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Sergii Koretskyi during an interview in Kyiv on Sept. 12 | BLOOMBERG

Minimizing the chance of a repeat is shaping up as a litmus test for the new government under Koretskyi, a former chief executive of Ukrainian energy companies.

In the interview, Koretskyi pledged to expand the network of so-called “invincibility points” across the country — temporary shelters powered by diesel generators where people can warm up, charge their devices and get hot meals. He also called on Ukraine’s foreign partners to send repair crews to help their counterparts restore electricity, heating and water supplies.

European allies are already pitching in with what they have, including spare parts for power plants and heating equipment, according to a person familiar with the efforts who asked not to be identified as the process is not public.

Even more effective would be more interceptors for U.S.-made Patriot air-defense systems that are desperately needed to counter Russian ballistic missiles.

Those rockets inflict some of the heaviest damage on Ukraine’s infrastructure, including energy facilities. Since August, Russia has significantly reduced its use of them in favor of jet-powered drones, suggesting that Moscow may be stockpiling the weapons for strikes on Ukraine’s power and heating infrastructure during a cold period, which usually starts in late October or early November.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy | BLOOMBERG

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told reporters in August that the country needs at least 300 Patriot interceptors for winter, and proposed that the U.S. sell Ukraine 5% to 10% of its reserves.

“America could replenish its stockpiles, and we could make it through the winter,” Zelenskyy said. The U.S. response remains unclear.

European leaders plan to to lobby President Donald Trump on providing Ukraine with more Patriots as world leaders attend United Nations meetings in New York this week. They will also push other nations including the U.K. and Japan to provide financial support for Kyiv.

Germany and some European countries said this month that they’ll buy more Patriot systems and send missiles from their own stocks to help repel an expected Russian winter onslaught.

Yet some of Kyiv’s allies remain fearful of what lies ahead.

One senior European official expressed the concern that if Ukraine failed to make it through the winter it would eventually lose the war.

Other allies are less pessimistic, believing that even with a severe shortage of interceptors, Ukraine will be able to cope with the hardships.

With the war well into a fifth year, the pendulum regularly swings on the narrative, according to a top NATO official, who said that this summer it was very positive for Ukraine and now it’s negative again, even though the frontline is barely moving.

Allies should “be clear-eyed about the outlook,” U.S. Under Secretary of Defense Elbridge Colby told a virtual meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group Sept. 9. “We cannot predict when this tragic war will end.”

Relief could come for Ukraine if Russian President Vladimir Putin accepted some form of energy truce — a U.S.-backed proposal under which Moscow would halt strikes on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure and Kyiv would stop targeting Russian oil refineries. But there is little sign of Putin’s agreeing to such a deal.

Tusk told parliament in Warsaw last week that intelligence was clear that Russia is “not ready for any serious talks about a ceasefire” let alone peace, absent Ukraine’s de facto capitulation.

“The Russians are not interested — at least until the end of winter — in any serious talks,” he said. “They are convinced the winter will be tragically critical for Ukraine.”

Prime Minister Koretskyi, too, sees no sign that Russia wants peace. The good news is that Ukraine’s power infrastructure is better protected against anticipated air barrages, he said, urging citizens to do their part to bolster the government’s preparations.

Ukrainians remain resilient, at least publicly.

“We’ve spent the past five years preparing for things to get harder,” said Storozh, and even so, “there’s no sense of total despair.”