By Tetyana Ogarkova

It’s the most beautiful winter we’ve ever had. Snowflakes dancing in the air, deep snowdrifts covering the fields, snow‑laden trees, landscapes glowing like something from a Bruegel painting.

But it’s also the cruellest winter. The wintry beauty goes hand in hand with Arctic cold, temperatures dropping to -20°C or even -30°C, black ice on the roads and constant Russian strikes against our energy infrastructure.

Sporadic and methodical since October 2025, these strikes took a truly genocidal turn in January 2026. More than a thousand residential buildings in the capital will be without heating until the spring, after three power stations on the left bank were destroyed. In mid‑February, after the latest massive attack on the nuclear power stations in the west of the country, Kyiv has only 1.5-2 hours of electricity out of every 24.

‘In this country we do not forget winters,’ writes our friend, the poet and soldier Yaryna Chornohuz, in her poetry collection whose title ‘This is how we remain free’ captures the spirit of Ukrainians.

Ukrainian social media has turned into a running chronicle of everyday survival. How do you heat a home without central heating? How do you cook without an oven? How do you drive out the damp that eats into the walls? How do you protect the water pipes?

In my sister’s apartment, a family of tenants with three children sleep in a tent perched on a sofa to keep warm.

In the apartment of a friend – a history teacher – the bathroom facilities have become unusable: the building’s plumbing system has frozen. A former diplomat colleague saw his flat flooded after the cold caused the heating pipes to burst.

Power cuts punctuate everyday life. During the rare hours with power (2 hours out of 24 in Kyiv in the past few days), you have to cook, charge all the batteries, refill the water supplies (without electricity there’s no tap water), do the shopping (and carry it up however many floors without the lift), do the washing up, put the washing machine on, take a shower and hoover. For many flats, the rare hours with electricity are the only source of heat and comfort before they quickly slip back into darkness and cold.

When the power comes back on, people check the news. They learn that Trump considers the negotiations in Abu Dhabi to be ‘making good progress’, that the war should end in the summer and that Putin has ‘kept his word’ on the week‑long ceasefire (which lasted three days!). They hear NATO secretary-general Mark Rutte announce, from the rostrum of the Ukrainian parliament, that after the ceasefire Ukraine will receive ships, planes and troops from its allies to protect the country against any potential new Russian attack. The European ‘coalition of the willing’ says it is ready to ‘guarantee Ukraine’s security’ as soon as peace arrives.

But what do we do in the meantime, with the Russians bombing us every night? The European allies say they’re ready for war – as long as the war is already over. They insist they’re ready to fight – provided there’s no fighting left to do.

For us, the defence cannot pause. We have to repair what we can today. To carry on with life, raise our children and hold on – today, tonight, tomorrow morning.

A week ago, in the midst of this endless cold, we set off for the front to deliver two cars for the Ukrainian army.

Miles and miles of roads leading to the front are covered with fishing nets, to protect civilian and military traffic from small Russian drones. The roads feel like strange, fleeting tunnels – almost surreal. On either side, despite the protection, there are crashed cars, destroyed by drones: a tanker truck, a lorry, a military vehicle, a civilian vehicle. These are the ones who didn’t manage to reach their destination, those the nets couldn’t save.

Despite the constant danger, the road isn’t empty: cars are travelling in both directions. In this world where light and safety are fleeting, something very solid stands out. The quiet resolve to keep going, not to give in, to live without any guarantee or promise of tomorrow. We fill up with winter fuel and set off.

As I watch the sun glinting on the nets that look like spiders’ hairs, I make myself a promise: as soon as I’m back home, I’ll take my children to the ice rink. It will be open and lit, thanks to the generator. We’ll laugh, slide around, fall over and get back up, enjoy the winter. The rink’s generator will give us the same illusion of normality as those nets on the roads near the front line.

In the end, my children will have no other childhood than this one – in the middle of a war, with two hours of electricity a day. For our soldiers, the only battle is the one taking place right now, under those remarkably fragile fishing-net shields. The prospect of any future ‘peace’ feels very far off.

In the meantime, it’s the most beautiful winter we’ve ever had. One we won’t forget.

Tetyana Ogarkova is coordinator of the international department of the Ukrainian Crisis Media Center and co-presenter of the podcast ‘Explaining Ukraine’. She is also a lecturer at Mohyla University in Kyiv and has a PhD in literature from Paris XII Val-de-Marne University. Tetyana is a much sought-after guest on television and radio programmes around the world, where she describes the dramatic plight of the Ukrainian people and provides deep insights into this human tragedy.