“Ice Age in Kyiv.” How Power Engineers and Railway Workers Are Restoring Electricity and Heat Around the Clock

Kyiv’s energy and railway crews work tirelessly amid Russian attacks and extreme frost, restoring electricity, heat, and water to homes, overcoming danger, frozen pipes, and constant pressure.

In the morning on one of the streets in Kyiv’s Dniprovskyi district, a team of power engineers is replacing a power transformer at a substation. BBC News Ukraine reports this.

“We’re going to replace it to restore electricity to consumers,” explains the team foreman, Oleksandr Mykolaiovych Yovenko. A shift for the emergency repair crew lasts 12 hours, but sometimes they have to stay longer.

“For example, the day before yesterday we worked until 11 p.m.,” says Oleksandr Mykolaiovych. “Right now, so many people are in a very difficult situation, without electricity for several days, sometimes for four days. We work until all requests are completed.”

The fourth winter of Russia’s full-scale war has become the hardest in Ukraine. NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte called it “the harshest” in more than ten years.

An anticyclone from Siberia brought frost with ice and snow and has stubbornly lingered over Ukraine throughout January. Russia, meanwhile, has taken advantage of the extreme weather to intensify strikes on energy infrastructure.

Mass nighttime attacks with missiles and drones — the largest of which occurred on January 9, 13, 20, and 24 — left thousands of homes in the capital without electricity and heating.

In some apartments that were left without heating, temperatures dropped below 10 degrees Celsius.

On January 29, U.S. President Donald Trump said he had personally asked Vladimir Putin not to shell Ukrainian cities for a week during the severe cold.

According to Trump, Putin agreed, and Kremlin spokesperson Dmytro Peskov confirmed this consent, but only until February 1. Starting from that date, after a brief thaw, Ukraine is again expected to face frost of up to −25 degrees Celsius.

Kyiv’s city administration reported that heating has not yet been restored in more than 300 residential buildings, most of them in the Troieshchyna district.

Several hundred emergency repair crews are saving the capital from the “ice age,” as Kyiv residents have dubbed the cold and darkness. The city authorities have involved Ukrzaliznytsia and other state-owned companies.

Municipal workers, power engineers, and railway workers from frontline Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia, as well as from Dnipro, Odesa, Vinnytsia, and Lviv — cities that themselves are suffering from shelling — have come to assist Kyiv’s emergency crews.

Behind these dry figures are people whose unseen work, day and night, helps restore heat and light to the homes of exhausted Kyiv residents.

BBC News Ukraine spoke with the heads of two emergency teams: DTEK power engineers who are restoring electricity, and railway workers who are repairing heating systems in Kyiv residential buildings.

“The hardest part is not the bolts, but the responsibility”

I speak by phone with Oleksandr Yovenko, who was working that day in Kyiv’s Dniprovskyi district — he has only a few minutes to talk to journalists.

Due to a transformer failure, six apartment buildings and a nearby parking lot are without electricity, and he is in a hurry.

Because of overloaded power grids, transformer substations are constantly breaking down. These are indirect consequences of Russian shelling, as well as of the cold, which forces residents to turn on additional heaters as soon as power is restored.

When electricity is available for only a few hours a day, people immediately switch on appliances that are usually used evenly throughout the day, and the equipment cannot withstand the load.

Previously, there used to be a morning peak, when everyone was getting ready for work, and an evening one, when people came home.

Now there is a peak every time electricity is restored to homes, even at night, DTEK explains. In Kyiv and the region, the company’s teams are currently engaged mainly in this kind of emergency repair work.

Today, more than 60 repair crews of DTEK Kyiv Electric Grids are working in Kyiv every day, says Denys Bondar, CEO of the regional division.

During peak loads and after massive attacks, the company brings in assistance from other regions. At present, Kyiv’s power engineers are being supported by 12 additional crews from Khmelnytskyioblenergo, Cherkasyoblenergo, Ternopiloblenergo, as well as DTEK Dnipro and Odesa Electric Grids.

“They repair networks and substations every day after shelling and accidents caused by overloads on lines and transformers,” Bondar explains.

Quite often, Oleksandr Mykolaiovych says, they have to fix the same facilities they have just repaired. If restoration is not possible, power engineers, together with the State Emergency Service, connect diesel generators to supply electricity to buildings.

The work of power engineers is full of risks even in normal times. Recently, the death of former Ukrenergo head Oleksii Brekht shook the entire country. An experienced engineer who had overseen the restoration of power grids after hundreds of strikes was killed by an electric shock at a facility.

Just a couple of days later, during emergency repair work at one of Kyiv’s energy facilities, rescuer and high-altitude worker Oleksandr Pytaichuk was killed.

But during the war there are other dangers as well — shelling of energy facilities and unexploded ordnance at repair sites. DTEK employees must undergo training in mine safety and first aid, the company says.

Every power engineer knows the rule: before starting work, stop for a minute to assess whether the task can be carried out safely.

“Air raid alerts have added their own complications,” Yovenko says. “During alerts, personnel are not allowed to work — we go to shelters.”

However, this winter the main challenge has been the weather.

On the day we speak with Oleksandr Mykolaiovych, it has become slightly warmer in Kyiv. But in previous weeks temperatures at times dropped to −20 degrees Celsius, and forecasters are again predicting extreme cold.

“We have tea, and we also have the team vehicle, where we can warm up when it gets really hard,” the foreman says.

Suddenly he brightens up and adds that people from nearby buildings often treat them to tea.

Social media is full of stories about emergency workers being brought hot drinks and food. In one district of Kyiv, a hair salon even gave workers haircuts during short breaks, Ukrzaliznytsia CEO Oleksandr Pertsovskyi recently said.

“The residents of our buildings are very compassionate people,” Oleksandr Mykolaiovych confirms.

At his own home, as in most Kyiv households at the moment, there are disruptions to heating and electricity.

“There was a period when there was no electricity for three days; now it’s a bit better,” the foreman says. “My colleagues and I are in the same situation as all Kyiv residents.”

Taking advantage of the conversation with an international media outlet, he decides to thank other countries for the equipment being sent to Ukraine. He says he often sees European Union markings on the transformers and other devices they install.

A few days ago, Energy Minister Denys Shmyhal said that 16 countries had provided Kyiv with generators and power transformers. A total of 437 have already been delivered from the EU and Japan, with more than 500 more expected.

At the same time, about half of the cogeneration units transferred to Ukraine, which could have helped mitigate power outages, are still not operating. Experts explain this primarily by poor management decisions.

When I ask what is currently the hardest part of emergency repair work, Yovenko, who has been an emergency worker for 25 years, answers: psychological pressure.

“It’s not the metal and bolts we tighten, but the responsibility to restore electricity as quickly as possible,” he says.

“We’re all living people and we worry about the same things. Because everyone is without power — our parents, our children, and our colleagues.”

New outage schedules

But how quickly can electricity be restored in an affected area?

It depends on the scale and nature of the damage, explains Denys Bondar, CEO of DTEK Kyiv Electric Grids.

“After shelling, we can begin work only after the all-clear is given and after permission from all operational and security services.”

At the same time, power engineers look for alternative ways to supply electricity to the de-energised area, temporarily restoring power via backup lines.

Critical infrastructure facilities — hospitals, boiler houses, water utilities, and transport — are restored first. After that, electricity is returned to residential buildings.

Recently, Kyiv switched from emergency power outages to temporary individual schedules for electricity restoration.

This was done to avoid peak loads, when everyone turns on their appliances at the same time, DTEK explains. It is also because the condition of equipment and the ability to restore networks vary across different parts of the city.

You can check your schedule via the DTEK Kyiv Electric Grids chat bot or the Kyiv Digital app for each address.

This is a temporary measure, Bondar adds; accidents or new attacks could force a return to emergency outages.

“Repairing again and again”

In winter, the hardest work is repairing underground cable lines, says the CEO of DTEK Kyiv Electric Grids. They are better protected from strikes but more difficult to repair, especially in freezing temperatures.

To replace them, crews first need to locate the damage, dig up the frozen ground, and carry out repairs in the cold.

The Russians deliberately target the same energy facilities. With each attack, restoration becomes more difficult, as equipment damaged repeatedly is more vulnerable to failures.

“We repair them again and again after repeated attacks, knowing that this time could have been spent on planned maintenance,” says Denys Bondar.

He adds that the hardest part mentally is working when shelling hits residential buildings or nearby areas.

“When you see people’s pain, despair, and grief, it’s impossible to get used to it.”

“We’re toughened up — we are Ukrzaliznytsia”

Meanwhile, on the other side of the capital, in the Solomianskyi district, railway crews are also restoring heat in apartment buildings.

The old Soviet central heating system could not withstand targeted Russian strikes on CHP plants amid severe frosts.

After the last massive attack on January 24, six thousand buildings in Kyiv were left without heating. Most of them had already had their heating restored after previous attacks.

When a CHP plant does not supply water with sufficient pressure, hot water does not reach the buildings, and in severe cold, water in the pipes freezes and they burst.

“We heat and drain the water, cut out the sections of pipe that have burst, replace them, wait for the heat carrier, and then restart the building,” explains Andrii Zaruba, director of the Buildings and Facilities Department at Ukrzaliznytsia. He coordinates the work of railway crews in Kyiv.

But even when the pipes in a building are ready, heat supply can still take several more days to arrive.

“We prepared 10 buildings for start-up recently, but we couldn’t activate them because there was no heat carrier,” Zaruba says.

In those same buildings, it was also necessary to rescue plumbing and sewage systems that had started to freeze.

Oleksandr Mykolaiovych Liashuk manages five crews working in the Solomianskyi district. He is deputy head of the Kyiv branch of the Buildings and Facilities Department at Ukrzaliznytsia.

In three days of work starting January 20, they repaired nine buildings, four of which had been put into operation at the time of our conversation.

“For one building, we might spend three days; for another, half a day,” he explains. “Different buildings, different types of damage.”

People are already at the site from seven in the morning and sometimes don’t go home until after ten at night, Liashuk says.

“When we start the water in the heating system, we can’t leave it until the work is fully completed.”

Sometimes they have to work two or three shifts, both at night and during the day.

“We’re toughened up — we are Ukrzaliznytsia,” Oleksandr Mykolaiovych says. Exactly 20 years ago, he and many of his colleagues were saving the frozen city of Alchevsk from the cold in the same way.

In the apartments where the repair crews work, temperatures can be as low as 2–3 degrees Celsius, and if residents have left, it can even be below zero.

The biggest problem is empty apartments.

“About 35–40 percent of the apartments have no residents. We have to locate them through the housing office, and sometimes involve the police. Without access to an apartment, we cannot start up the building,” Liashuk says.

A state within a state

Since last week, the number of railway crews deployed by Kyiv authorities has increased from 40 to 60. Fourteen of them are working in Troieshchyna, a residential area the size of a small town that has been without heating for almost a week.

Locomotive engineers, train drivers, track workers, power engineers, communications staff, and passenger company employees have come together as one team to help save Kyiv.

“The railway is a small state within a state,” says Oleksandr Liashuk.

“We have huge infrastructure, specialists in almost every trade, operations and major repairs. The railway is capable of performing any kind of work,” he explains, describing why railway workers were specifically deployed.

They have been accommodated in a dormitory and in rest rooms at the station, says department director Andrii Zaruba.

He says that Ukrzaliznytsia provides food and heating, but it is still not easy for the workers.

“After such hard work, and being without electricity on top of that, we manage somehow — we’ve been able to set up generators in some places and try to make life easier for people,” Zaruba adds.

He says the crews are working at the limits of their strength, because “everyone understands what has happened.”

Workers’ salaries average 20–25 thousand hryvnias, but both the government and Ukrzaliznytsia itself have promised additional payments to the teams that deal with the aftermath of Russian attacks.

Many compare the situation in Kyiv to Alchevsk in eastern Ukraine, which in 2006 was left without heating during a −20-degree frost due to a heat main failure.

Back then, the city was restored at the forefront by the railway workers.

“I think the authorities remembered Alchevsk and turned to the chairman of the board (of Ukrzaliznytsia),” Zaruba says.

However, both he and Liashuk emphasize that the situation in Alchevsk was much more difficult.

“The whole city was completely frozen, including the heat mains, everything. And the temperatures were different. If here it was −18°C, there it reached −35°C,” Liashuk says.

Since January 20, railway workers have restored heat, water, and sewage systems in 51 apartment buildings in the capital.

But forecasters are predicting severe frost again, and the risk of a major attack remains, which means that emergency crews’ work will not decrease anytime soon.

Ending the conversation with Oleksandr Mykolaiovych from DTEK, I asked what brings him the greatest joy in his difficult work.

“When we drive away from a repaired substation and look from the vehicle into the windows of buildings where the lights are already on,” he replied, “that is very inspiring.”