Ukraine’s harsh winter a memory but new Russian tactics sow destruction
Al Jazeera
Ukraine’s latest winter hardly resembles the brutal cold season of 2022 that was beset by blackouts, but Russian shelling persists.
Kyiv, Ukraine – Artem Honcharuk turns off the lights and switches on two halogen lamps to illuminate the black plastic letters on his shop’s wall that read “copy centre” in Ukrainian.
More than a year ago, he tinkered with these lamps so they could run on batteries and light up his print shop in an underground shopping mall in central Kyiv.
“That’s the light I was working under,” the 31-year-old told Al Jazeera, standing next to a desktop computer, copy machines and printers. “I already forgot how it was.”
In the winter of late 2022 and early 2023, Moscow rained hell on Ukraine, targeting civilian infrastructure to deprive residents of power, central heating, water – and the will to fight back.
Andriy Kostin, the prosecutor general of Ukraine, called it “terrorism and war crimes” at the time.
