According to official data, more than 650,000 displaced people are registered in Kyiv and the surrounding region. A large share of them left Donetsk and Luhansk regions after 2014 and 2022. Many are now facing hardship again: after a series of massive Russian attacks, numerous homes in the capital and its suburbs have been left without electricity, heating, and hot water.
Iryna, a pensioner who left Donetsk back in 2014, says the temperature in her apartment in Kyiv’s Troyeshchyna district has stayed below 10 degrees Celsius for more than a week. She says that after the strike on January 20, 2026, heat was absent for three days, then briefly returned, but disappeared again after another overnight attack. Electricity is available for only a few hours at a time, followed by long outages.
“Russia destroyed our whole life and is still doing it. We will somehow survive,” Iryna says.
The couple switched off their refrigerator, using the balcony instead, boil water on a gas stove, and sleep fully dressed under several blankets, warming themselves with bottles filled with boiling water. The house from Iryna’s childhood near Donetsk, she says, was destroyed by the Russian army in the autumn of 2024, and the town is now under occupation.
The publication says the winter wave of strikes on utility infrastructure began on December 27, 2025, when about 6,000 apartment blocks in Kyiv were left without heat. More attacks followed on January 9, 20, and 24, and on February 3. Utility workers have not had time to repair the damage before new strikes hit.
Andriy Marusov, a displaced resident from Mariupol who left the besieged city on March 16, 2022, says heating in his Kyiv apartment building was absent for roughly a week in total, and at one point the indoor temperature fell to zero. He recalls that in Mariupol people had to obtain water, food, and firewood under threat of death, and says the main priority now is to keep clothes dry and warm.
Another displaced resident, Kateryna from Donetsk, lives on Kyiv’s left bank with three children. Her apartment in Rusanivka has no hot water or heating, water runs down the windows, and electricity appears for only two to three hours. The family sleeps under four blankets, uses heated flooring when power is available, and warms up in the kitchen with a gas stove. After the January and February strikes, the report says, CHP-4, CHP-6, and the Darnytsia CHP plant in Kyiv were destroyed; these facilities had been major sources of heat and electricity for the capital’s left-bank districts.