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Russia's targeting of Ukraine's energy infrastructure has left people without light, heat and water in one of the coldest winters in recent years. Ukraine's capital, Kyiv, has been especially hard-hit. The mayor advised those who could to leave the city, but many people, especially the elderly, have nowhere else to go. NPR's Eleanor Beardsley and Polina Lytvynova visited some of them.
ALINA DIACHENKO: We can jump in my car. I will be driving.
(SOUNDBITE OF CAR DOORS CLOSING)
ELEANOR BEARDSLEY, BYLINE: That's Alina Diachenko, director of charity group, Starenki, which brings food and fellowship to elderly people stuck at home.
DIACHENKO: On the left bank of Kyiv, the situation may be the hardest - and the houses without warm and without electricity. And some older people - you will see - they live in very, very hard conditions.
(SOUNDBITE OF KEYPAD BEEPING)
BEARDSLEY: We arrive at the first high-rise building to visit 88-year-old Liliya Martynivna Lapina (ph). Today, there is power, so we take the elevator to her tenth-floor apartment.
(SOUNDBITE OF PACKAGES RUSTLING)
DIACHENKO: (Speaking Ukrainian).
LILIYA MARTYNIVNA LAPINA: (Speaking Ukrainian).
DIACHENKO: (Speaking Ukrainian).
BEARDSLEY: Lapina sits bolt upright in bed and seems to come alive when we arrive. Her bed is stacked with blankets, and she's dressed in multiple layers of colorful wool sweaters and a headscarf. She eagerly examines the package of pasta, oil, tea and sugar.
LAPINA: (Speaking Ukrainian).
BEARDSLEY: There are Orthodox icons everywhere in her tiny, cluttered apartment. Lapina says God will punish Russia for what it's doing. She loves Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
LAPINA: (Through interpreter) Our president is wonderful. I listen to him on the radio. Nobody else could do what he does, and he's Jewish. They're very good people, the Jews.
BEARDSLEY: Volunteer Natalia Zaitseva (ph) calls up on the interphone at our next visit.
NATALIA ZAITSEVA: (Speaking Ukrainian).
BEARDSLEY: We skip a blinking, sketchy-looking elevator and decide to walk up the nine flights to Olga Ivanivna's (ph) apartment.
(SOUNDBITE OF FOOTSTEPS)
BEARDSLEY: Zaitseva, an IT worker with two children and an aging mother, says she feels compelled to help out in her free time.
ZAITSEVA: Children and older people - it's my passion, especially if I see someone who haven't any friends, any family, no family. I feel (speaking Ukrainian).
(Through interpreter) I feel tears coming and being somewhere in the middle of my throat.
(SOUNDBITE OF PACKAGE RUSTLING)
DIACHENKO: (Speaking Ukrainian).
OLGA IVANIVNA: (Speaking Ukrainian).
BEARDSLEY: Seventy-eight-year-old Ivanivna greets us in a wool hat. There's been electricity in the last two days. "Thank God," she says, because otherwise, her apartment is freezing and there's no water.
IVANIVNA: (Speaking Ukrainian).
BEARDSLEY: She shows us a picture of her son, a doctor who died five years ago. "My good health departed along with him," she says.
IVANIVNA: (Speaking Ukrainian).
BEARDSLEY: She still keeps his house plants alive. They blossom and flourish in the front room with its large window.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOG BARKING)
BEARDSLEY: At the next apartment, we're greeted by Irma (ph), a ferocious, soulful-eyed lapdog. Irma's mistress, Vira Pavlivna Romanchyk (ph), stands behind her walker. She's nearly blind. She says her son gets her groceries.
VIRA PAVLIVNA ROMANCHYK: (Speaking Ukrainian).
BEARDSLEY: "But Irma is my best support," she says. "She sits by my side all day long."
DIACHENKO: (Speaking Ukrainian).
NELIA STEPANIVNA THOMASHEVSKA: (Speaking Ukrainian).
BEARDSLEY: In the next building, 80-year-old Nelia Stepanivna Thomashevska (ph) is curious about my microphone. Her husband was a Soviet military pilot who died in a helicopter crash in 1974. They had no children. As we stand in her tiny kitchen...
DIACHENKO: (Speaking Ukrainian).
(SOUNDBITE OF WINDOW OPENING)
BEARDSLEY: ...She opens the window and sprinkles seeds on the sill to attract pigeons. She's also got two cats. She says they help her during the nightly drone and missile attacks.
THOMASHEVSKA: (Through interpreter) My cats go on the covers. And they know ahead that it's going to be explosion, so they jump on the covers. They know before me that there's going to be an explosion.
BEARDSLEY: But none of this seems to have sapped her will.
THOMASHEVSKA: (Speaking Ukrainian).
BEARDSLEY: "We will hold on. We will survive, and we will win," she says.
THOMASHEVSKA: (Speaking Ukrainian).
BEARDSLEY: (Speaking Ukrainian) - glory to the heroes. As we walk away from her apartment building through the snow, Thomashevska opens the fourth-floor window and looks out.
THOMASHEVSKA: Hello.
DIACHENKO: There she is with the pigeons.
BEARDSLEY: How do I say, have a good day?
DIACHENKO: (Speaking Ukrainian).
BEARDSLEY: (Speaking Ukrainian). And she waves us goodbye. Eleanor Beardsley, NPR News, Kyiv. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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