“I put gas in our generator. There’s going to be a power cut in ten minutes, I’d say.” It would take more to take away the smile from Evgueniy, a dentist in Dnipro. It’s only 4 p.m. and the blackout is here to last all evening. “While we were talking, the power went out.”notes the dentist.
The energy crisis is reaching another milestone in Ukraine. The latest massive airstrikes, carried out by Russia, on Thursday November 28, considerably reduced electricity production capacities. To cope with the shortage, while winter is already here with negative temperatures. The country is forced to carry out load shedding cuts, several hours a day.
“In three minutes, it’s resolved and we can go back to work”explains Iryna as the generator starts. Inside the dental office, she also prefers to have fun with the situation : “We laugh, we tease each other, what else can we do ?” Despite the almost daily Russian strikes, and the electricity cut off more often than it works. “Today, from 8 hours at 2 p.m. hours there was no electricity and now it is cut off again until 11 evening hourssays Iryna. At work it’s easy, it’s complicated at home.”
At home, Iryna doesn’t have a generator, so she goes to bed early : “They bomb us and we sleep. In any case, if we don’t get up in the morning to go to work, we might go crazy.” Outside, the neighborhood is plunged into darkness and yet children are playing in the square between the buildings. Jana keeps one eye on them while chatting with a neighbor. “We have no electricity again, we only had it for two hours today. We arrive and everything is in the dark. We can’t see anything. That’s why we decided to let the children play outside a little.”
Jana has been caring for her grandson alone since her daughter’s death. And as a third winter of war, bombing and electricity shortages begins, she doesn’t really share the frenzied optimism of Iryna and Evgueny. “Even though I am an optimistic person, I no longer see the positive. You want to know how I’m coping ? At home, I have three telephones that I use in the kitchen and in the bedrooms to provide some light.”
After the latest Russian strikes, the electricity operator Ukrénergo announced that it had to further increase the scale of load shedding cuts : from now on 70% of the population could be without power, at the same time, for several hours a day.
Ukrainians and power cuts: report by Camille Magnard, Yachar Fazylov and Sandrine Mallon
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