KYIV, Ukraine — There's electricity on Kyiv's left bank today, so a small elevator carries visitors up to Liliya Martynivna Lapina's 10th-floor apartment. The 88-year-old has been spending her days in her bed under a pile of blankets by a bright but cold window, trying to stay warm.
She sits bolt upright and seems to come alive as visitors enter her apartment, erupting in a stream of words and enthusiasm over the care package of pasta, sugar, tea and cooking oil that has been delivered. Lapina is wearing multiple layers of colorful wool sweaters and a headscarf.
NPR is accompanying the aid group Starenki, which delivers food and fellowship to the mostly older people stuck in their apartments this winter as they try to survive the frequent heat and power cuts brought on by Russia's assault on Ukraine's energy infrastructure.
As Russian President Vladimir Putin fails to make significant progress on the battlefield, he is trying to break the Ukrainian people's will by plunging them into the cold and dark in one of the coldest winters in years. The capital, Kyiv, has been particularly hard hit. Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko urged those who could to leave the city. But many people, especially older adults, have nowhere else to go.
"The left bank of the Dnieper River has been very hard hit by Russian strikes, leaving most people in the dark for days on end," says Alina Diachenko, director of Starenki. "Their houses are without warmth and without electricity, and the old people try to heat themselves by wearing more clothes and turning on the gas of their stoves. They suffer a lot."
But on this day, Lapina is animated. Her cluttered apartment is filled with Eastern Orthodox icons. She says God will punish Russia for what it's doing. And she greatly admires Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy:
"Our president is wonderful," she says. "I listen to him on the radio. Nobody else could do what he does. And he's Jewish. They are very good people, the Jews. ... And God is a Jew."
Natalia Zaitseva, one of the volunteers with Starenki, has two children, an aging mother and a job in IT, but she still finds time to help those less fortunate.
"Children and older people are my passion," she says, "especially if I see someone who hasn't any friends or family. It gives me a lump in my throat, and I want to cry."
Zaitseva calls up on the intercom for the group's next visit — to Olga Ivanivna. Our group avoids a blinking, sketchy-looking elevator and decides to climb the nine flights of stairs to her apartment.
Ivanivna, 78, opens the door, also wearing layers and a wool cap, though there has been electricity for the past couple of days. "Thank God," she says. "Otherwise it's freezing and there's no water."
Ivanivna says no one else comes to visit her, so she's very appreciative of the staples and the camaraderie that Starenki brings.
She shows us a photo of her son — a doctor — who took care of her before he died five years ago. "My good health departed along with him," she says.
But she still keeps her son's house plants alive. All kinds of potted and hanging plants fill the front room with its large, bright window.
At the next apartment, our group is greeted by Irma, a soulful-eyed, ferocious lapdog. Irma's mistress, Vira Pavlivna Romanchyk, stands behind her walker. She's nearly blind. She says her son gets her groceries.
"But Irma is my best support," she says. "She sits by my side all day long, keeping me company and protecting me."
The final visit is to 80-year-old Nelia Stepanivna Thomashevska, who is interested to know what kind of journalists we are before telling us about her life. Thomashevska's husband was a Soviet military pilot, and they lived for a short time in Russia's far east. But he died in a helicopter crash in 1974. The couple had no children. She says that when she was younger, she was quite active in her apartment building's cooperative.
Standing in her tiny kitchen with its old appliances and stove, she tells us that she fears going without power more than the airstrikes. She points up at the light in the kitchen. "Losing electricity and heating," she says. But today the kitchen radiator is warm. Thomashevska opens the smudged kitchen window to sprinkle some seeds on the windowsill. Soon pigeons arrive, cooing and flapping.
She also has two cats. She says they help her during the nightly drone and missile attacks. "My cats go under the covers because they know ahead of time that there's going to be explosions," she says. "It's instinct. They jump under the covers and know before me there's going to be an airstrike."
But none of this seems to have sapped her will.
"We will hold on, we will survive and we will win," she says.
"Heroiam slava," she says to us in Ukrainian in a phrase that means "Glory to the heroes." While it can be said alone, it is also the second half of a call-and-response that Ukrainians begin with "Slava Ukraini" — Glory to Ukraine.
As we walk away from Thomashevska's apartment building through the snow, she opens her fourth-floor kitchen window and calls out to us, surrounded by pigeons.
"Garnogo dnya!" we call up from the street in Ukrainian: Have a good day.
Tending to her pigeons, Thomashevska waves us goodbye.
NPR producer Polina Lytvynova contributed to this report in Kyiv, Ukraine.
Copyright 2026 NPR
