Kyiv Power Cuts Lengthen as Some Families Lose 20 Hours
Some families in Kyiv are living with power outages of up to 20 hours, according to the BBC. Ukraine's planned power cuts, which have run on a rolling schedule since October, started earlier than last winter and are already lasting longer.
Daryna Kulchytska, a resident of Kyiv, has had electricity for only four to five hours a day in recent days. Her day is typically two hours on and eight hours off. She lives on the seventh floor of a building, and during outages the lift stops, the Wi-Fi goes off and the running water fails, because electricity is needed to pump water up to her flat.
Kyiv has been the worst affected city, and metro trains and trolleybuses have at times been brought to a standstill. Across Ukraine, hundreds of thousands of people have gone without power in recent weeks.
The cuts follow Russian attacks on Ukraine's energy grid, the network that generates and carries electricity. Those attacks have intensified in recent months. Ukraine has responded by striking Russian oil refineries, the plants that process crude oil into fuel.
One of Ukraine's largest power stations has been taken completely offline after a recent ballistic missile strike, a missile that travels along a high, arcing path. According to the BBC, the strike reduced the plant to twisted metal and broken pipes, with turbines buried in rubble.
Ukrainian officials are concerned that life will become unsustainable for millions of people if power supplies cannot be kept at a level of at least four hours a day.
