translated from Ukrainian

Those Who Survived the Winter

Through the ordeal of one seventeen-story apartment block in Kyiv, the piece shows how Russian attacks, failing infrastructure, and improvised solidarity turned the winter of 2026 into a struggle for survival for thousands of city residents.

Ті, хто пережив зиму. Хроніки порятунку київської 17-поверхівки, яка залишилася без тепла і світла в люті морози

Texty.org.ua · By Інна Гадзинська; Надя Кельм; Сергій Шевчук; Нікіта Головінський; Соломія Кульчинська · 6 May 2026 · read the original in Ukrainian →

Data JournalismЖурналістика даних

Those Who Survived the Winter. Chronicles of the Rescue of a Kyiv Seventeen-Story Building Left Without Heat and Light in Bitter Frost

On Friday, January 9, residents of a high-rise on Kyiv’s Left Bank woke up in cold, dark apartments. During the night, Russia had struck CHPP-5 with five missiles, leaving thousands of Kyiv buildings without heat, electricity, or water.

For this building, the attack marked the beginning of an icy marathon: an exhausting fight by residents to survive and save their own homes.

This building is one of a thousand with such problems. Through its example, we show what countless Kyivans faced in the winter of 2026.

Those Who Survived the WinterТі, хто пережив зиму

Chronicles of the rescue of a seventeen-story building on Rusanivka in Kyiv, left without heat and light in bitter frost

Burst pipes, flooded apartments, shattered windows, frozen electrical panels, melted wires: all this was happening in this and hundreds of other Ukrainian apartment blocks during twenty-degree frosts, air raids, and constant blackouts.

Texty.org.ua reconstructed, day by day, the chronicle of the rescue and survival of one building on Rusanivka in January and February 2026.

All apartment numbers and names in the dialogues from the building chat cited below have been changed.

What Makes the Building SpecialЧим особливий будинок

The high-rise on Ihor Shamo Boulevard was built in 1969 as an experimental project for a “quality panel block.” Six such buildings were erected in the former Soviet Union: first two in Moscow, then four in Kyiv.

The building has no basement. The first floor is nonresidential: it contains the lobby, fire stairs, and utility rooms, and the elevator shafts begin there. Beside them are concrete supports with open space between them. The high-rise seems to be hanging in the air. For that reason, Kyivans call it the “house on chicken legs.”

For clarity: between the first and second floors there is a technical floor with utility pipes; another technical floor with pipes is in the attic. In the illustration, they are marked in pink.

The high-rise has sixteen residential floors, from the second to the seventeenth, and three entrances, with 128 apartments in each. The apartments are equipped with gas stoves, a rarity for buildings of this height. The exterior walls are three-layer concrete panels.

About a thousand people used to live in the building. After the start of the full-scale war, many apartments emptied out.

The heating system depends on electricity: the heat-transfer medium, or technical hot water, is pumped upward by four electric pumps. One more pump serves the water supply. The pumps are installed in an underground heating station next to the building.

First the third entrance heats up, then the second, then the first. Regular blackouts cause disruptions: air gets into the pipes, and its bubbles block the flow of hot water.

This apartment block is usually warm. But once the blackouts began, the apartments heated unevenly: in some it was 20 degrees Celsius and above, and residents opened windows to air the rooms; in others it was 15 or 16 degrees.

The 2025 heating season began badly. The building’s electrical grid could barely withstand the load fluctuations caused by regular blackouts: residents switched on appliances all at once, trying to manage laundry, cleaning, and charging devices while they had power.

A home voltage meter belonging to one of the building’s residents shows only 177 volts instead of the required 230, because everyone switched on their appliances at the same time as soon as the electricity returned.

An important detail: the building’s internet almost never disappeared, even during prolonged blackouts, because providers had installed powerful batteries for their equipment.

The building is serviced by ZhED-410, a housing maintenance section and subdivision of the municipal management company. But the ZhED cannot cope with its work, because it services around fifty old panel blocks.

In 2016, the building’s residents tried to create a condominium association, but they did not gather enough votes.

The Heating Disappeared. Day 2, January 10Зникло опалення День 2 10 січня

City authorities said CHPP-5 would take two days to repair.

Kyiv city authorities warn of a prolonged outage caused by an enemy attack.

Because of the frosts, some buildings began draining water from their heating systems to save the pipes from freezing. But the ZhED decided to wait, hoping the heat supply would be restored.

Toward evening, cold water appeared in the apartments, and even the electricity came back after flickering for a while.

Day 3, January 11День 3 11 січня

At eight in the evening, the power was turned on. The building’s electrical grid could not withstand it: a transformer fuse burned out and had to be replaced.

Later, one of the three phases in the electrical panel burned out. A third of the apartments were again left without power. The building’s residents created an emergency fund in the chat. They agreed to send money to a card for urgent needs, each giving whatever they could.

Ice in the Radiators. Day 4, January 12Лід у батареях День 4 12 січня

Heat was slowly appearing, but not for everyone, not at once, and not for long. The radiators in the first entrance remained icy.

First entrance. A cat, out of habit, sits on the radiator waiting for warmth, but it is cold.

“I’m very happy for everyone whose radiators have warmed up, but not from the bottom of my heart,” admits Maryna from the first entrance. Neighbors from the second thanked her for her honesty.

The half-destroyed power plant could not provide the necessary hot-water pressure for it to pass through the pipes of all the risers, the vertical branches.

On top of that, the pipes were clogged by air bubbles. The air had to be released through special valves. To do this, Valerii, the plumber from the ZhED, hereafter simply the plumber, had to come at exactly the moment when there was electricity and the electric pumps were working: he had to climb to the seventeenth floor, preferably by elevator, and from there to the upper technical floor.

The situation was growing more complicated. “Neighbors, I saw that the windows in the apartment on the thirteenth floor have no glass,” Valentyna wrote in the neighbors’ chat. “Everything there has probably frozen. I’ve submitted two requests to the ZhED.”

This was unoccupied apartment 83, which had been standing with its panes blown out since a summer storm. The frozen water in its radiators was apparently blocking the heat supply to other apartments. The neighbors agreed to look for the apartment’s owners.

Day 5, January 13День 5 13 січня

A relay in the heating pump burned out. One resident bought a new one at a shop and gave it to the electrician. The pump was replaced, but they could not start it: the electricity had gone out again.

At night the temperature fell to minus 18 degrees Celsius. In apartments without heating, the temperature dropped to 7 or 8 degrees. On the lawn behind the building, city authorities set up two Points of Invincibility. People could charge devices, warm up, and have something hot to eat.

Day 6, January 14День 6 14 січня

The radiators were either cold or barely warm. There was no hot water. The power came on toward evening for a few hours, but people could not warm themselves with electric fan heaters, and were advised not to plug power banks in to charge all at once: the building’s electrical grid could not withstand the load. By evening, two of the three phases in the electrical panel were already melting.

Active residents printed a leaflet urging people to use electricity sparingly, wear warm clothing at home, heat water on the gas stove, and wash laundry at 20 to 30 degrees Celsius.

“Your heater at home means darkness in the building!” the activists proposed as a headline. They also called the ZhED, emergency services, and hotlines with reports that there was no heat.

Day 7, January 15День 7 15 січня

Seeing the plumber was considered a great stroke of luck. Tradesmen were running from building to building. The residents faced a task with two asterisks: wait for electricity, and catch the plumber in that brief interval.

“Valerii called. He says his wife has a birthday, she’s turning sixty, and he has to go shopping. He won’t make it to us today,” Oksana wrote in the neighbors’ chat on the evening of January 15.

“Let’s kidnap him,” Andrii joked in reply.

“Tell him we’ll give his wife a present,” Viktoriia added.

Even when electricity and the plumber coincided in the building, another accident would occur: a phase would melt in the panel, or the pump relay would fail. Releasing the air from the pipes was impossible.

The Heating Was Started. Day 8, January 16Опалення запустили День 8 16 січня

In the evening, everything came together: employees of the energy company, the plumber, and the head of the ZhED started up the heating system.

But they could not warm the radiators in the first entrance: it was too far from the pumps. In the chat, people joked:

“Good evening! Light, water, heat: is any of it there?”

“Only evening!”

But the building has gas. On kitchen stoves and in ovens, residents heat firebricks, then carry them around the apartment and set them out.

“I bought seven of them at 55 hryvnias each,” Tetiana shares from experience. “I heat them and carry them into the room on a tray.”

The temperature in the apartments is 1 to 6 degrees Celsius. The windows begin to frost over from the inside.

To get warm, residents turn on gas ovens and open the doors so that warm air fills the room.

They heat firebricks on gas stoves.Гріють на газових плитах вогнетривку цеглу

People gradually leave the high-rise in search of warmer housing.

Those who stay wear winter coats at home, three pairs of trousers, sleep in sleeping bags and outerwear, surrounded by hot-water bottles and bottles of hot water. Some pitch camping tents in their rooms and light candles inside; it is warmer that way.

That day, neighbors together with a ZhED representative try to get into apartment 83 to check the condition of the radiators and persuade the owners to glaze the windows, or at least cover them with something.

The owner agreed to come after a call from the ZhED. But during the meeting, she would not let the neighbors over the threshold, behaved aggressively, hit the ZhED representative, smashed the glass in the entrance door, and ran away. The radiators were never checked. The police did not come when called. The injured woman refused to file a complaint.

“Let’s call in a lift and board up the window from the outside,” neighbors suggest in the chat.

“Maybe we should say a sabotage and reconnaissance group has holed up there? Then they’ll come,” others toss out ideas.

In the evening, utility workers installed a diesel generator near the building to keep the heating pumps running without interruption.

Day 9, January 17День 9 17 січня

In the morning, fuel was brought for the generator, and the pumps began working. At lunchtime, water started pouring from the lower technical floor above the first entrance: a harbinger of the floods to come.

In the ominous apartment 83, a radiator had burst. Water flowed down to the lower floors. On the twelfth floor, the first wet stains appeared.

Only after that did the police agree to open the apartment door; the owner refused to come. Neighbors entered the apartment together with police officers and employees of the municipal emergency rescue service, KARS.

A KARS worker opens the door of the problem apartment in the presence of police officers and building residents.

Inside, the wind roamed; piles of garbage lay everywhere; crowds of cockroaches ran about.

The sewer was clogged, and the radiators in two rooms had frozen. One of them had cracked, and that was where the water was leaking from.

The radiators were cut off and caps were installed on the pipes. Later, neighbors boarded up the windows with chipboard sheets and covered them with polyethylene.

Residents of the building boarded up the broken window with a sheet of chipboard and covered it with polyethylene. Flood. Day 10, January 18

The pressure in the heating pipes reached the required seven atmospheres. The radiators began to warm ever so slightly, but not in the first entrance.

…the essay continues at the source.