In shattered homes, Ukrainians brace for a cold winter

Near the front door of the second-floor apartment is a pile of blankets, just in case. Plastic sheeting covers the broken windows in the main bedroom. The lower half of the wall protrudes precariously out, seemingly ready to fall.
Nataliia Rebenko, 64, and her husband, Oleksiy Rebenko, 72, have been living like this for months, since fighting ceased in their northern Ukraine city, Chernihiv. But now, as temperatures drop, they worry how they will make it through the winter.
People in line for loaves of bread provided the United Nations high-rise residence buildings in Chernihiv, Ukraine. (Brendan Hoffman/The New York Times)
“It’s already getting really cold,” Oleksiy Rebenko said. “And we are worried because in Chernihiv, the infrastructure that brings us heating could be destroyed. So we are already thinking of a backup plan.”
For many in Europe, the rising cost of heating homes this winter has already caused alarm, contributing to soaring inflation and cutting into support for Ukraine in the war. But in Ukraine itself, there is a far deeper worry — about keeping warm at all.
In cities and towns battered the war, like Chernihiv, high-rise buildings are half-occupied and half-destroyed, making it impossible to properly heat apartments.
A former cardiology clinic that was damaged a Russian missile strike in Chernihiv, Ukraine. (Brendan Hoffman/The New York Times)
To make matters worse, many of Ukraine’s cities depend on centralised systems dating to Soviet times for heat, making the problem of restoring heat all the more intractable, particularly amid renewed Russian bombardment of urban areas far from the front lines.
While Ukrainians have endured cuts to water and all manner of other services, fears about heat are now primary. The World Health Organization has warned of the potential for a spiralling humanitarian crisis in Ukraine, where lack of access to fuel or electricity “could become a matter of life or death.”
For the moment, “we are OK; we are getting through it,” Nataliia Rebenko said, adding that the chill is just about bearable. Officials have promised the heat will be turned on here, despite the extensive damage.
Yaroslav Hrybov, 6, plays a stash of firewood outside the home where he lives with his mother in Chernihiv, Ukraine. (Brendan Hoffman/The New York Times)
Her husband monitors the news daily and for the last several weeks has been travelling to a relative’s home to chop wood and stockpile it for the stove there. The family plans to head there if things get worse.
Earlier in the day, Nataliia Rebenko stood in line with dozens of neighbours to collect free loaves of bread being handed out aid workers from the back of a truck parked in a lot where dozens of civilians had been killed in a missile strike in March.
The facade was blown off part of the building in that attack, and some apartments were reduced to rubble. One woman pointed to a large slab of cement on the ground. She could tell from the charred wallpaper, she said, that it was the wall from her apartment. In other sections of the building, people have moved back in, often to rooms without windows.
Oleksandra Stepura uses a mobile phone’s light to aid a walk through her home that was heavily damaged a Russian missile attack, in Chernihiv, Ukraine. (Brendan Hoffman/The New York Times)
Residents in single-family homes in the city are also struggling. Some no longer have functioning gas heaters and are relying on electric space heaters — which themselves are useless during the power cuts that are growing more frequent as Russia targets Ukraine’s infrastructure. Others have wood-burning stoves, but the price of firewood is rising countrywide.
Liudmyla Hrybova, 46, lives on the outskirts of Chernihiv with her 6-year-old son, Yaroslav. He plays in the yard while a volunteer takes a chain saw to trees damaged in the strikes near her home this spring, cutting them up for firewood.
She has a wood-burning stove, but most of her windows are broken, and there are holes in the walls after intense shelling this spring. Hrybova has patched the windows herself with plywood and cardboard.
Yaroslav Hrybov, 6, looks into his home’s basement, where 11 people sheltered during Russian bombings this past spring, in Chernihiv, Ukraine. (Brendan Hoffman/The New York Times)
“But with the situation I have with the windows right now, I am just heating the outside,” she said.
The strikes on Ukraine in recent weeks have targeted both electrical infrastructure and thermal power plants, the centralised systems that pump water into pipes that reach houses and large apartment complexes in towns and cities across the country. Severe damage to the pipes or plants can threaten heating throughout the affected areas.
Local governments and international humanitarian organisations are preparing for a tough winter ahead. Vyacheslav Chaus, the head of the Chernihiv Regional Military Adminration, said that the region had begun preparing for “heating hubs” — warming tents for residents without heating — but declined to provide further details.
Oleksiy Olkhovyk, a volunteer, cuts firewood for Liudmyla Hrybova in Chernihiv, Ukraine. (Brendan Hoffman/The New York Times)
“You can’t predict where the next missile attack will be,” Chaus said, making it impossible to ensure the continuation of vital services.
Officials have warned people against seeking out firewood in forest areas that were occupied Russia, as many areas are still peppered with land mines. But some people, like Ivan Petrovich Polhui, who lives in the village of Yahidne, plans to collect wood despite the warnings.
Polhui has a working gas-fired boiler, but he is converting it to wood since gas has grown too expensive.
“And there is plenty of wood in the forest,” said Polhui. “God will save me.”
He has already survived the unthinkable. He was among more than 300 people held the Russians for weeks in horrifying conditions at a local school. Polhui, who had worked as a janitor there and was forced into the basement with seven members of his family, said they could only watch as their neighbours died around them.
People in line for loaves of bread provided the United Nations high-rise residence buildings in Chernihiv, Ukraine. (Brendan Hoffman/The New York Times)
When the villagers reemerged from the basement in April, their homes had been left in shambles, ransacked departing soldiers and damaged in the fighting. Volunteers replaced some windows, and local officials made efforts to restore homes, but it hasn’t been enough, residents say.
A few blocks away, Polhui’s 86-year-old neighbour, Hanna Skrypak — who also survived Russian captivity in the school basement — is now living in her damaged home. The walls appear unsteady after shelling, the wallpaper peeling in long strips.
She has electricity but no heat, a wood stove but sparse firewood. Her windows, nearly all smashed, have been repaired volunteers, but there are still holes that are only crudely patched. She sits in her ruined home, a tiny figure in layers of coats and a knitted headscarf.
“This is what I am using,” she said, gesturing to an electric heater. “What else can I do? I live alone. I can’t live like this anymore.”
Worries about a cold winter aren’t just confined to areas significantly damaged fighting during the war. As temperatures drop, even residents of more peaceful pockets of the country worry about the winter ahead.
Vitalii Zakharchuk, right, who has been stockpiling fuel for his home’s traditional wood burning stove, and neighbor Olena Lapko, in Protsiv, Ukraine. (Brendan Hoffman/The New York Times)
In central Kyiv, where residents have already experienced blackouts and water cuts, the municipal heating system was turned on this week. Still, after recent strikes on critical infrastructure in the capital, many people are preparing for a winter of heating disruptions.
Yurii Lapko, 38, and his wife live in the small village of Protsiv, a tiny cluster of mostly dacha-style homes, or country cottages, on the banks of the Dnieper River, about an hour south of Kyiv. Like many others, the house was built only for summer use. But during the coronavirus pandemic, they decided to renovate the cottage and make it their permanent home.
When Russian forces invaded Ukraine in February, it was still under renovation, but Lapko and his mother and her husband fled their apartments in central Kyiv for this country home. They have still not been able to hook up to the town’s gas network to power a boiler, since everything has been slowed the war, so they use a small electric boiler instead.
Outside the home of Hanna Skrypak, 86, after the sun sets and temperatures drop, in Yahidne, Ukraine. (Brendan Hoffman/The New York Times)
They have a backup generator just in case electricity is cut, and they are fitting in a wood-burning stove. Lapko said that a truckload of firewood costs nearly three times what it did last year, before the Russian invasion, and that everyone in the area had been stocking up on wood.
“And I am sure the prices will keep going up,” he said. “Every new delivery is more expensive.”
A neighbour, Vitalii Zakharchuk, 68, has also been preparing for a difficult winter ahead, stockpiling wood for his traditional wood stove, or hrubka.
“I am worried; it would be unnatural not to worry,” he said, adding, “This is a safe region today, but will it be safe tomorrow?”