On the 291st day of war, the fighting continues in the east and south of Ukraine, but the strategic stake is now on the side of the power stations.
Since early October, more than 1,000 Russian shells and missiles have targeted the Ukrainian power grid, plunging up to 10 million people into darkness at the same time.
After Iranian drone attacks on Saturday, 1.5 million inhabitants of the Odessa region would be deprived of electricity.
20 Minutes
interviewed Cédric Mascaras, a French humanitarian volunteer, and Alexandre Haserway, a Ukrainian who lives in Kiev.
They confide their fear of seeing “a famine this winter” and tell of the life disrupted by the daily power cuts, the sometimes difficult access to drinking water and the sweaters strung on each other.
When he agrees to turn on the camera of his mobile phone, right in the middle of our interview, the face of Cédric Mascaras is barely distinguishable.
The 50-year-old is nevertheless in the middle of Mykolaiv, but the city is engulfed in darkness.
Only a shopping center is lit in the distance.
To see where he is setting foot in the street, the French merchant, who has come on a humanitarian mission, relies on the headlights of passing cars.
He ends up turning off his camera: the gigabytes and the battery of his phone are precious.
"Here, it's dark at 3:30 p.m.", explains Cédric Mascaras.
"There are no lit streets in Ukraine, neither in Mykolaiv, nor in Kharkiv, Kiev or Lviv", the largest city in the west, relatively spared by the war.
The Ukrainian electricity network is no longer able to provide public lighting everywhere.
According to Volodymyr Kudrytsky, managing director of network operator Ukrenergo, Russian forces have fired more than 1,000 rockets and missiles at the network in a few weeks.
On November 18, more than 10 million Ukrainians were thus without electricity after a series of strikes.
Learn to live without electricity
At the beginning of December, more than 500 municipalities were still in the dark, despite the repairs.
But "even in the cities supplied, there are load shedding", specifies Cédric Mascaras.
These cuts are "never planned, and we do not know how long they last".
Internet access and the telephone network also drop regularly.
In Kiev, "we have about five or six hours of electricity a day," says Alexandre Haserway at
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.
The one who works as a motion designer has adapted: “Sometimes I turn on the light before going to bed.
If the electricity comes back in the night, it wakes me up and I can work.
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The young Ukrainian is not the only one to have changed his way of working.
“Many take their computers for meetings on Zoom in the cafe or bar”, supplied by individual generators.
Generators and auxiliary heaters are now everywhere in Ukraine.
“We were asked to bring some back from France”, testifies Cédric Mascaras, who mainly transports food products in a loaded truck thanks to partners in France.
Leaving Montauban with a friend, he toured Ukrainian cities to distribute packages to local associations such as Ukraine Libre or the Red Cross.
“There will be a famine in Ukraine this winter”
Totally voluntary, the merchant goes through these contacts because "the needs are so enormous that if you open the truck in Izioum, you no longer control anything", explains the one who remembers "people who fought for a packet of cakes" .
In the queue for food distribution, more than a kilometer long in Mykolaiv, “a man dropped his tray on the ground.
He ate his portion of rice on the ground,” he recalls painfully.
“There will be a famine in Ukraine this winter,” warns the fiftieth.
In towns near the front or recently taken over, chaos reigns.
“Odessa is facing a total blackout.
Mykolaiv has been living without running water since the spring,” explains Alexandre Haserway.
Hospitals are equipped with generators but “scheduled interventions could be canceled in the event of a critical situation”, he adds.
In Kherson, the successive evacuations did not empty the city.
Fifteen civilians died in bombardments at the end of November, and a few days after our interview, Cédric Mascaras informed us that he was “back in Kiev” after “a crazy day in Kherson under bombardments and rockets”.
The countryside as a refuge
Far from the front line, Alexandre Haserway is aware of being “much luckier than at least half” of the Ukrainians.
His old house is individually equipped for gas.
And there is a “buvette” near his home where he can draw water, “but only when there is electricity”.
He is therefore stocking up on water, in particular for air alert episodes, like this Sunday.
One of his friends has "bought a small gas stove for camping", and Alexandre does not suffer too much from the cold by "putting on hoodies and sweatshirts".
Conversely, in the large complexes of the Soviet era in kyiv, “a power plant supplies the whole building”, and two hours of electricity are not enough to restart the heating.
But if the weather has improved in the capital since a very harsh episode of -10°C at the end of November, temperatures could soon become negative again.
“If the energy crisis continues, we will go to the countryside for the winter,” announces the motion designer.
There, “everyone has a fireplace or a wood stove,” explains Cédric Mascaras, who is doing his fifth tour of Ukraine.
Over there, the tourniquet and the shooting courses offered by his friends to Alexandre for his birthday, in November, could serve him well.
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War in Ukraine
World
Odessa
Testimony
Kherson
Kyiv (Kyiv)
Electricity