A letter from Kyiv, without electricity

In what is becoming depressingly commonplace, the air in Ukraine was rent by Russian missiles on Monday, devastating (among other things) a children’s hospital. The Russian strike killed dozens of sick children and healthcare workers while wounding over 100 more.

As bad as that event is, Russia’s attacks on Ukraine’s electrical infrastructure promise far more deaths in the coming winter.

How bad is it? On a trip to Kyiv from June 20 to July 4, electricity was only on about 30 percent of the time in the capital city.

There were three ways to find out that the electricity was out again: first and easiest was if the lights were on. When the electricity was shut off, we were immediately plunged into darkness. But saving energy is important to Ukrainians, and it’s summertime; many people in Ukraine’s capital city leave their lights off during the long day, preferring to use the natural light of the sun.

The second way to discover that the power had been cut again: dozens or hundreds of nearby generators roared to life. As soon as my ear detected generators powering up, I knew I was in for hours of the distinctive chugging that has become part of the background noise in Kyiv.

In the unlikely event that I didn’t see lights go out and couldn’t hear the generators grumbling, the third way to tell the electricity was out was the unmistakable, pungent reek of gasoline exhaust from said generators. The smell begins minutes after the generators wake up. It’s like being stuck in traffic in Los Angeles in the 1980s.

Electrical power — a hallmark of the modern era — is precious in Ukraine and increasingly hard to come by. Russia’s attacks on the energy grid have reduced output to between four and eight hours of central generation per day. That’s four to eight hours of lighting, of charging your laptop and power bank, of air conditioning in the summer and heat in the winter.

In many apartments, it means four to eight hours of hot water.

These generators are the evidence of both Russia’s success in devastating Ukraine’s centralized production of electricity and the native ingenuity of Ukrainians in procuring alternatives. A quick walk down any street during periods of electrical shortage reveals countless generators attached to businesses by snake-like extension cords.

Inside apartment buildings, residents have resorted to other means for generation — personal batteries and power banks. Thousand-dollar batteries and multiple devices are charged during periods of production, to be used for necessary tasks such as heating water or powering wi-fi when the power goes off.

Those living in apartment buildings rush to do their chores, like washing dishes and clothes, while the power is on. And they must think ahead about whether the elevators will be running to bring groceries or transport heavy objects up to their apartments, lest they be forced to climb six, 10, or 18 flights of stairs. What this lacks in comfort it makes up for in utility as a workout, unless one happens to be old or disabled. For them, stairs aren’t really an option — they’re effectively trapped once the electricity goes off.

Winter is going to be very difficult; the worse the winter, the harder it will be for Ukrainians.

From the environmental perspective, energy rationing and the proliferation of generators has made Kyiv and other cities into mega-polluters. The personal generators crowding city sidewalks are doing far more, collectively, to contribute to global warming than the idling of energy plants in Russian missile attacks. In this regard, Russia is helping supercharge global warming, offsetting entire countries’ worth of renewable initiatives.

It was impossible to say how many generators are running on any given day. During an interview in late June, Oleksandr Kharchenko, managing director of the Energy Industry Research Center, estimated that Ukraine has “hundreds of thousands” of generators being used for businesses or homes. At one point, that might have been over a million, but the engines are difficult to maintain and not intended for continuous use.

Kharchenko said that while the environmental cost is great, the country will realize medium- and long-term benefits. Ukrainian citizens are, out of dire necessity, decentralizing their energy generation and consumption faster than any other nation on earth, which is making them better consumers, and pushing them toward expensive but necessary upgrades that make their homes more resilient. He also said that some of the older coal-fired plants that have been destroyed by Russian attacks will be replaced by more environmentally sustainable forms of power generation.

Weapons and ammunition deliveries to Ukraine are crucial. In spite of the inconvenience of having to use electricity like someone living in the 1920s, the mood in Kyiv is much better than it was the last time I visited, in March and April of this year. People feel more optimistic given the passage of the American aid bill and Ukraine’s badly needed victory on its northern front over Russia’s spoiled Kharkiv offensive.

Still, future aid packages ought to include renewable power generation and batteries. The next step in making Ukraine resilient against Russian attacks depends partly on weapons and air defense systems against missiles, and partly on getting homes and communities the energy they need before winter sets in. This could be a boon for U.S. and European manufacturers of home batteries, and of solar panel arrays made in the U.S. and in Europe. Right now, China has an iron grip on this market and is uninclined, for reasons of their own, to assist the Ukrainians.

It is uncomfortable to spend summer days sweating in an apartment or outside in the shade. The generators are noisy and smell bad. But all this is going to look lavish by comparison this winter, when the cold sets in. The time to act is now.

Adrian Bonenberger is a writer and a veteran of the U.S. Army. He is a co-founder of American Veterans for Ukraine.