Kharkiv, the dark city – Politics

When night falls, Kharkiv goes out. No neon signs, no street lamps, instead curtained apartments and barricaded shop windows. The former metropolis of millions lies in darkness, as if the city were retreating into the background, as if it were invisible and no longer a target for Russian missiles and Iranian drones. Kyiv, the capital, may shimmer and twinkle. In Kharkiv, dog owners stumble through deserted streets in the glow of their cellphones. The few restaurants that are still open dare only dim lighting. And soon there may not even be that.

Almost half of the country’s electricity infrastructure has been damaged after the attacks in recent weeks. Most recently, a power plant in Kryviy Rih in the south was hit, after which the city had no electricity. Energy Minister Herman Halushchenko warned of further attacks on the power grids. In an interview with Russian journalist Yulia Latynina, presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovich, possibly the country’s most hated politician, spoke of “months” without gas, water or heating. And President Volodymyr Zelensky himself called for saving electricity in the evening.

With Iryna Walentynowa, 31, he is running into open doors. Valentynowa has a different surname, but she doesn’t want to give it publicly because she works in the higher civil service. On this October morning she waits for the subway in rush hour traffic, in the evening she curtains the windows, turns off the lights and she and her boyfriend spend the remaining hours with their mobile phones or at least their notebook. “We cook something quick on the gas stove, then it gets dark,” she says. With every power failure – and there have been a few in the past few weeks – local transport comes to a standstill. What if the metro stops running at some point? “Then we’ll just take a taxi,” says Walentynowa.

That sounds combative, as it almost always does when you ask Ukrainians about future hardships. But as the days grow shorter and a cold rain falls, a lot of people are quietly wondering what winter will bring. So far, Kharkiv has gotten off almost unscathed. The electricity in the surrounding villages would sooner be shut off for a few hours than the administration in the city let the lights go out.

If Kharkiv were still the industrial center from before the war, the networks would have collapsed long ago anyway. But most businesses have moved to safe areas or closed. Perhaps a tenth of the downtown stores are still open.

The mayor wants to save on transport

However, according to experts, the metro alone consumes about a third of the city’s energy requirements, plus trams and trolleybuses. Mayor Igor Terekhov therefore wants to save on transport in the future: the escalators on the metro will be shut down down to the very lowest ones, and the lighting at the stops will be halved. Trams and trolleybuses run less frequently, and hot water is rationed. Whether that’s enough remains to be seen. It’s hard to go door-to-door to see if people are letting the kettle boil for too long, said an energy sector worker.

The city bought generators for hospitals and other critical infrastructure facilities. And the Kharkiv people do the same. In a branch of “Epicentr”, a chain of gigantic garden and DIY stores, you will find a small generator from Black & Decker, a Kärcher, a Polish make and not much else in the generator department. “These are the leftovers. People overwhelm us, we keep waiting lists. But there are only a few suppliers and nothing else comes in before the end of the month,” says Epicentr salesman Dmitry Podkopay.

Finding a wood stove is hopeless

Hennadij Sahuruiko roams the corridors of the “Epicentr” in search of a second generator. He took the first one with him when the Russians came to Oskil. Sahuruiko is the mayor of the town of Oskil near Izyum, which was liberated in the great Ukrainian summer offensive. 70 percent of the liberated areas now have electricity again, Kharkiv regional governor Oleg Sinegubov said at a press conference on Thursday. In Oskil, you haven’t noticed that much: “People look for generators on the Internet, in the markets, but there’s hardly anything to get,” says Sahuruiko. It doesn’t look any better for gas stoves. Finding a “Burschuika”, one of the compact iron wood-burning stoves, an invention from Soviet times, is now almost impossible. And you shouldn’t set it up in a prefabricated building anyway.

Combined heat and power plant 5 in Kharkiv, the second largest in the country, also dates from Soviet times. After an attack on September 11, it was in flames. To date, it is said, it only delivers 15 to 20 percent of the pre-war output. In the 1970s, the power plant was a masterpiece of Soviet engineering, built jointly by specialists from Russia and Kharkiv. Ideologically, the supply of electricity could not be overestimated: “Communism is Soviet power plus electrification of the country,” was Lenin’s famous slogan.

The Soviet Union has been history for 30 years, and Russia’s knowledge of what were once shared networks is now a tactical handicap for Ukraine. With the beginning of the war, Ukraine separated its network from Russia and Belarus. The integration into the Western European networks has been planned for years, but has not yet happened.

Europe to help ‘close the skies’

Not only Energy Minister Halushchenko, but also the energy suppliers in Kharkiv are therefore calling for Europe’s support in order to “close the sky”: “We won’t be able to hold out for long without a reasonable air defense system,” says a manager at the Kharkiv energy company Oblenergo: “If “If the restrictions on people remain at this level, they will be fine. But the Russians want us to sit in the dark and cold and not even be happy when the army reports successes.” Panicking the Ukrainians and making cities uninhabitable are Moscow’s goals.

Despite all the concerns, one must also see the positive side. Initially, the Russian army did not damage the power plants because the Kremlin expected a quick victory and wanted to use the facilities to supply the newly conquered. “They’ve now realized that they’re not going to conquer Ukraine. That’s why they’re just destroying it.”