Bucha's Unyielding Spirit: Surviving Winter Amid Russian Attacks

Outside the main pumping station for Bucha, three engineers bundled up in parkas are working on the emergency generator, keeping the Ukrainian city supplied with water. One holds a heat gun to the generator's filter in an effort to unfreeze it, his face reddened by blowing snow and a daytime temperature of 12°C (10.4°F). Watching attentively is the city's mayor, Anatolii Fedoruk. The generator in his office is also frozen when the Guardian visits, and he apologizes for the lack of coffee. Four years ago, in the first days of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Bucha and the neighboring city of Irpin became emblematic of the brutality of Moscow's brief occupation of this area amid the murder of civilians. While the buildings in Bucha have largely been repaired and the Russians pushed away long ago, Ukraine's long war is still very much being felt here—most profoundly after Russia attacked energy infrastructure as temperatures dropped to almost -20°C. As a national state of emergency was declared, energy rationing was already in force in Bucha this winter. The latest attacks have exacerbated an already difficult situation. Arriving in the city on a day of harsh cold and falling snow, traffic lights are dark, and residential blocks and many shops remain unlit due to the latest rolling power outage. In the Battkava cafe, Oleksandr Bartkov, 28, waiting for the generator to warm up before turning on the espresso machine to serve his first customer, shares, "Recently in the eight or nine hours we are usually open, we have three to four hours of electricity. It’s been going on all winter. But after the last big attack on January 9th, things have got worse. Then we had a day without any power at all. I don't think it is even the worst place in Ukraine; everyone is struggling." The situation for small businesses is grim, with many having closed. Bartkov fears more will shut down even if it's only until the end of February. A short walk away, Fedoruk is in his office in the municipal headquarters. While he admits Bucha is unable to maintain the power rationing schedule of three hours on and six hours off, he believes the situation is better than in some areas of Ukraine's capital, Kyiv. "My children live in a tall tower block without power. They have been asking to come and stay with me," he confides. Fedoruk explains that in the more recently developed conurbations like Bucha, cities have developed a distributed power supply system that is more resilient to Russian attacks. "The power systems in the cities were built during the old Soviet system with big power plants that cities rely on. A secondary issue is that if they were built in the Soviet era, Moscow knows exactly where they are," he elaborates. The mayor noted the Russian attack on January 9th came knowing severe frost was imminent as they aimed to disable power plants. Ukraine's energy infrastructure has faced significant challenges, and the weaponization of winter against civilians has prompted Kyiv to retaliate by targeting Russian energy resources. In a prefabricated building constructed with the help of the Polish government to house displaced families, the heating is dependent on electric storage heaters. The fridges, cookers, and hotplates in the communal kitchen all rely on electricity, and the walls are not thick enough to sustain warmth in cases of sudden power loss amid the biting cold. It is warm during the Guardian's visit, but the building's manager, Vitalina Tsisar, 31, who was herself displaced from Kramatorsk, describes the fallout of a Russian air raid that cut mains power on January 13th. Tsisar recounts, "It was one in the morning, and there was an attack in the area. The electricity turned off immediately. Within two hours it was freezing cold in here. It got down to 6°C. The generator only has enough power to warm one radiator in the communal room. So at 6:30 am, we tried starting it, but it was frozen because it was -20°C. Finally, we managed to get it going at 9 am, but just to heat one room." In the meantime, families gathered in the communal room to stay warm, with children bundled in hats and coats. As Tsisar shared a meal with her seven-year-old son Roman, she assured him that he was safe though he expressed feeling cold. Continuing attacks on energy infrastructure have led the Ukrainian government to warn it has limited energy reserves left, pushing for increased electricity imports. Oleksandr Kharchenko, the director of the Kyiv-based Energy Industry Research Center, stated, "This is an attempt to break people," indicating that Moscow seeks to convert a man-made disaster into a complete crisis. The ongoing energy crisis has driven Ukrainian citizens to voice discontent with municipal authorities, fueling blame among the political elite over inadequate preparedness in the face of expected escalations in attacks. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has openly criticized Kyiv's civic administration over the capital's failures to withstand the cold during Russian bombardment. In Bucha, however, Fedoruk has already witnessed his city withstand one terrible crisis and remains confident about its resilience amid the latest challenges. "Four years ago, Russia said it would take Kyiv in three days and failed. That’s when they realized the war would continue for a long time as they prepared to exhaust us. But we're standing. We are still defending." Related Sources: • Source 1 • Source 2