In the bitter cold of January 2026, a woman pulls a child on a sled past emergency heating and power tents in Kyiv, Ukraine. This poignant scene unfolds following relentless Russian attacks on the nation's critical infrastructure, transforming the harsh eastern European winter into a deliberate weapon of war.
The Strategy of Cold: Echoes of Sarajevo
As an experienced war correspondent, I have witnessed this brutal strategy before. Vladimir Putin is now weaponising the savage winter, employing tactics reminiscent of the siege of Sarajevo in 1993. During that conflict, people burned books and furniture for warmth, water froze in pipes, and electricity vanished entirely. Children slept in coats and hats, their breath visible in dark rooms, while the cold itself became an instrument of warfare.
I recall reporting from the Bosnian capital, observing doctors operating by candlelight wearing camping headlamps. Elderly residents chopped wood in city parks until no trees remained, dragging their meager fuel home on sledges. The ground became too frozen to bury the dead on football pitches that later transformed into cemeteries. One particularly terrible frozen day, I visited an old people's home near a frontline and counted numerous frozen bodies, victims of this calculated cold.
A Modern Winter Siege
Three decades later, I am witnessing another winter war in Ukraine – a human-made catastrophe of staggering proportions. Russia is systematically targeting the country's energy infrastructure with devastating precision. Since mid-autumn, attacks on power and heating systems across eastern, central and southern Ukraine – including major cities like Kyiv, Odesa and Kharkiv – have forced daily electricity outages.
Until December, power cuts followed a grim, predictable rhythm: four hours on, four hours off, continuing day and night. This meant civilians endured just twelve hours of light and warmth, followed by twelve hours of darkness and penetrating cold.
The Scale of Destruction
According to Ukraine's minister of economy, Oleksii Sobolev, the total damage to energy infrastructure from these attacks over three months will cost an estimated $1 billion to address. However, no statistic can adequately capture what it means to live in cities where winter has been deliberately transformed into a tool of terror.
On 9 January 2026, a massive strike on Kyiv's energy grid left 6,000 residential buildings – approximately half of the city's housing supply – without heating. Just eleven days later, another attack cut power from more than 5,600 buildings, many of them the same structures. On 24 January, these neighbourhoods were hit yet again: 6,000 buildings lost heating, with 3,200 remaining without as night descended.
Life in the Freeze
This devastation occurs as temperatures in Kyiv plummet to between –15°C (5°F) and –18°C, dropping to –20°C at night. During a recent Zoom call with human rights lawyer and Nobel peace prize winner Oleksandra Matviichuk, she sat wrapped in multiple layers – a parka and scarves – yet refused to complain about the conditions. "It's not your fault," she told me when I apologised, embarrassed that my colleagues at The Reckoning Project are suffering so valiantly.
Another colleague, Maksimas Milta, lives in Podil, one of Kyiv's oldest neighbourhoods. During one week in January, he endured 98 hours without electricity out of 168 total hours. The following week brought 99 hours without power. Despite this, he attended work daily, refusing to surrender to the circumstances. This is not merely a temporary disruption; it represents a siege by alternative means.
Human Cost and Heroism
Future generations will recall these terrible stories. On 21 January, Oleksii Brekht, former acting CEO of Ukraine's electricity transmission operator, was killed while working at a damaged substation. In Dnipro, emergency service divers enter the freezing Dnipro River, working for hours in sub-zero temperatures to repair heating pipelines. While this represents remarkable heroism, it also signifies desperation: people are literally freezing to death, compelling extraordinary measures.
Ukrainians have begun describing this reality as "kholodomor" – death by cold – echoing the Holodomor, the human-made famine Stalin used to crush Ukraine in the 1930s. Where hunger served as the weapon then, winter fulfills that role now.
Adapting to Extreme Conditions
Inside apartments across Ukraine, civilians heat bricks on gas stoves, using them as makeshift radiators. Families pitch hiking tents in their living rooms, sheltering inside wearing thermal clothing and sleeping bags. Schools in Kyiv have extended holidays until February, while elsewhere children have returned to online learning because classrooms have become too cold.
One of the cruellest consequences involves military veterans with bionic prosthetics. Without electricity, they cannot recharge their artificial limbs, adding physical limitation to their suffering.
Defiance Amid Desperation
Yet amid this engineered suffering, something extraordinary persists. Ukrainian people continue their daily lives, refusing to be broken by Moscow's tactics. Future stories will recount how supermarkets now allow stray dogs and cats inside for warmth, and how young people organise generator-powered raves in courtyards, dancing in darkness as acts of defiance. This resilience represents Ukraine's trademark – fierce rebellion against Russian aggression.
I remember similar defiance from my Sarajevo days. The refusal to be broken. The preservation of humour despite nearly four years of siege. The bars heated with dangerously flaming open gas pipes where patrons ordered black market whisky. The laughter echoing through underground parties in bomb shelters. The heartbreaking strength required to burn a six-year PhD thesis to heat a room so family members might survive.
The Psychological Warfare
We must acknowledge the full scope of Putin's strategy. These attacks aim not only at physical destruction but also constitute psychological warfare. The Kremlin hopes civilians will eventually break, but their deeper objective involves turning populations against their own government.
During the Bosnian war, the international community failed to stop the siege, resulting in 100,000 deaths that might have been prevented. We declared "never again," then looked away. Now in Ukraine, winter serves as a weapon as deadly as the drones buzzing through frozen night skies seeking targets. The world must finally name this reality for what it represents: a war crime.
