As freezing winter approaches, Kyiv residents look for shelter elsewhere

As the freezing winter draws near, Kyiv residents are seeking shelter elsewhere

With Russia’s assaults on Ukrainian cities intensifying and autumn’s cooler weather signaling another difficult winter ahead, Ukrainians are facing two major threats at once: Russian drone and missile strikes, and the bitter cold.

“It was a very difficult winter last year in Kyiv,” says Mariia Shostak, a mother of two who is now packing her belongings and leaving her small apartment.

Last winter was among the toughest yet, with long stretches of sub-zero temperatures and repeated power outages caused by Russia’s attacks on the country’s electricity grid.

“There were some days and weeks that were unbearable. I started thinking I’m not going through another winter like this.”

Mariia is not even waiting for winter to begin. Russia’s latest attacks on the capital have pushed her to act.

“Everything changed in late August and the beginning of September, when Kyiv started being attacked around the clock,” she said.

“Earlier, the drones and missiles were intercepted somewhere on the outskirts. Now it was happening in the centre, right above our heads.”

After weeks of mounting Russian strikes, which by the end of September had hit petrol stations, power plants and key bridges over the Dnipro river, Kyiv mayor Vitaly Klitschko said the city was facing a “very dramatic situation”.

The attacks, he said, were “tearing Kyiv apart”

Mariia’s children, four-year-old Artur and Kira, who is two, were both born after Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022.

Not wanting to expose them to another miserable and dangerous winter, she is taking them abroad. They plan to spend the winter in Hurghada, on Egypt’s Red Sea coast. Mariia says it is cheaper than Europe and warmer too.

“I don’t feel safe in Ukraine in any way,” she says.

Polls suggest many Ukrainians feel the same, even if not everyone has yet made such a drastic move.

A September survey by the Gradus research company found that 40% of Ukrainians were considering relocating if living conditions kept worsening; 35% said they would not move elsewhere, while 25% were undecided.

“People are thinking about a combination of stress factors,” Evgeniya Blyznyuk, Gradus’s founder and CEO, told us. “Not just about electricity and blackouts like last winter. Russians are targeting big logistics centres, which means that the population is worrying about products, about food during the winter.”

Russia’s recent strikes on Kyiv’s bridges, petrol stations and schools have deepened the sense of danger and dread.

For families with young children, the situation feels particularly urgent.

Last winter, Iryna, who asked us not to use her surname, says her three-year-old daughter Polina struggled to cope.

“Sometimes we didn’t have heating for weeks and the temperature inside the apartment was zero or five degrees,” she tells us. “So being here with a little child that is sick all the time was not OK.”

Recent events have only made Polina’s problems worse.

“We had two missile attacks this year,” Iryna says.

The first blast, in early June, shattered several windows in the family’s home on the north-western edge of Kyiv. A month later, after some repairs had been made, a second explosion near the base of their 10-storey apartment block sent a wave of earth into the flat, forcing the family into temporary accommodation.

Polina’s condition has worsened. She suffers from extreme anxiety, which has led to bouts of incontinence, vomiting and uncontrollable shaking.

“Now we have this neurological problem with her so that’s the reason we’re thinking about leaving,” Iryna says. “There are new symptoms after each shelling.”

Iryna, whose husband is in the army, has not yet decided where they will go. Her job with an international NGO may allow her to work remotely from Poland.

“Our president says that it is better to leave Kyiv because this is target number one,” she says.

For other Kyiv residents, the answer is closer to home: the wide open spaces of Ukraine’s countryside.

Olena Konoplia tells us she spent weeks searching for the right place before choosing a cottage in a rural community two hours outside the capital.

“I decided the better option will be a little village without any factories, any [warehouses] and any railway stations,” Olena explains.

“Everything that can be a Russian target.”

When we visited, Olena was busy transporting supplies to the house and overseeing the installation of a new door.

In line with Ukrainian custom, a priest has already come to bless her new home.

The cottage has gas-powered convection heaters, but in a nearby barn a pile of firewood will help keep Olena warm if the power goes out. She has also installed high-speed internet, which she needs for her work at a Kyiv-based charitable foundation.

At a time when air raid sirens sound constantly in Kyiv and explosions can be heard almost every day, the calm of the village is what Olena says she needs most.

“After several nights here, when I can sleep, just sleep, without any explosions, without any sirens, I feel better,” she says. “I can work, write my articles, I feel good.”

Olena’s elderly mother will soon move in with her.

“She lives in a pretty dangerous district in Kyiv and it’s harmful for her health,” she explains.

Of course, not everyone can afford a cottage in the countryside or a months-long stay abroad.

Most Kyiv residents will do what they can to get through another hard winter in the capital, just as they have before.

Authorities are taking steps to prepare. Some of Kyiv’s most vulnerable residents — the elderly and women with young children — are being offered places in converted sanatoriums and rehabilitation centres in the city’s wooded outskirts.

At the same time, around 15 small-scale power plants have been built around the city over the past 18 months in an effort to reinforce Kyiv’s battered electricity grid.

The plants, built in fortified bunkers and shielded from drone attacks by huge steel cages, can each supply electricity and heat to several hundred of the city’s high-rise apartment blocks.

But with energy companies already speaking about scheduled power cuts and supermarkets seeing periodic shortages of some goods, the pressure to leave is increasing.

Evgeniya Blyznyuk says she does not expect a mass departure from the capital and says most people have still not made up their minds, unwilling to risk their jobs or pull children out of school.

“They will postpone it until conditions become really unliveable,” she says.