Far-Flung Postcards is a weekly sequence by which NPR’s worldwide workforce shares moments from their lives and work all over the world.
I lit this candle at our bureau in Kyiv final month, after one lengthy energy outage left us in frigid darkness for hours. However we’re fortunate. For a lot of in Kyiv, this winter’s warmth and electrical energy blackouts final for days.
The fourth winter of Russia’s conflict on Ukraine has been probably the most brutal in latest occasions, and the Russians have weaponized this by repeatedly attacking Ukraine’s vitality grid.
Candles at the moment are a final possibility for gentle when emergency energy sources fail.
Additionally they trace at loss. “February … is sobbing,” the Ukrainian poet Iya Kiva wrote of the “damned winter” in 2022, when Russia’s full-scale invasion started, “and the candle drips on the table, burning and burning.”
Ukrainians say they may survive this part of Russia’s conflict too. They sleep with their coats on, typically beneath piles of blankets, swaddle their infants in insulated layers warmed by scorching water bottles, and collect their households to cook dinner borsch on moveable campfire stoves.
The Russian strikes on the vitality grid preserve coming. Another hit early Tuesday morning. The temperature was -21 levels C (6 levels F). A brand new low.
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