Three winters of Russian strikes on Ukraine’s power grid have taught Oleksandra Kovalenko and her family how to live in the dark. When the lights go out, they turn to power banks, and the children do their homework by headlamp. If blackouts drag on, they head to a mall to recharge devices.
“Everyone has more or less adapted,” Ms. Kovalenko, 37, said.
What made those wartime winters bearable, she added, was the steady flow of gas that kept the stove burning and the radiators warm in her three-room apartment on Kyiv’s northern edge, where she lives with her mother, husband and two children.
But as a fourth winter looms, Russia has expanded its attacks from Ukraine’s power grid to its gas infrastructure, hitting wells, storage sites, pipelines and other critical components. The Kovalenkos are wondering if they are about to lose a lifeline that has carried them through the war’s coldest months.
“If we can somehow live without electricity, then living without gas — I’m afraid to even picture it,” Ms. Kovalenko said. “I don’t want to.”
It is a nightmare scenario that officials say is Russia’s latest bid to destroy Ukrainians’ resilience after years of deadly strikes on residential areas and relentless attacks on power plants that have plunged millions into darkness and forced businesses to cut production.
In recent weeks, officials have warned that Ukraine may be heading into its harshest winter since the full-scale invasion in February 2022. Gas is the source of heat and cooking fuel for 80 percent of households in Ukraine, according to Sergii Koretskiy, chief executive of Naftogaz, the country’s state-owned gas giant. Most apartment blocks rely on centralized heating systems powered by gas.
For the first three years of the war, Moscow mostly avoided striking Ukraine’s gas network because it was used to transport Russian gas to Europe. But on Jan. 1, Russian gas stopped flowing through Ukraine as Kyiv ended a transit deal.
Soon after, Russia turned its fire on Ukraine’s gas facilities. In February and March, drones and missiles wiped out about 40 percent of Ukrainian gas production capacity, Mr. Koretskiy said in an interview.
