Families across Ukraine are living in “constant survival mode” as ongoing Russian missile and drone strikes leave neighborhoods without power for days, while temperatures plunge to life-threatening lows, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) warned on Friday.
“Families have even resorted to stuffing soft toys into their windows to block the freezing cold,” said Munir Mammadzade, UNICEF’s Country Representative in Ukraine, describing the desperate measures families take to protect their children.
The warning follows fresh attacks on power infrastructure in Zaporizhzhia in southern Ukraine and Kharkiv in the east, leaving residential areas without electricity, heating, and water. With temperatures dropping as low as -15°C (5°F) in Kyiv, the situation has escalated into a “national-scale emergency…on top of the war,” Mammadzade said.
Urban Survival Amid Winter Darkness
For families living in apartment blocks, survival is increasingly complicated. Kyiv resident Svitlana cares for her three-year-old daughter, Adina, on the 10th floor of a building without power. “She had no heating or electricity for more than three days, and now many families are enduring the second or third week of outages,” Mammadzade explained.
Jaime Wah from the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) noted that while power was often restored in days after previous attacks in Kharkiv and Odesa, the capital faces sustained outages affecting larger populations.
Nearly four years into the full-scale Russian invasion, UNICEF reports that children’s lives are still dominated by survival rather than childhood. Verified child casualties rose by 11 per cent in 2025 compared to the previous year.
Points of Warmth and Care
UNICEF supports vulnerable urban populations through heated mobile tents, known as “Points of Invincibility,” where families can find warmth, hot meals, and psychosocial support. Inside these tents, children play with toys and modelling clay, while parents charge devices, speak with psychologists, and regain some relief from harsh conditions.
“Svitlana wraps her child in multiple layers and navigates 10 dark floors to reach a tent set up outside by Ukraine’s State Emergency Services,” said Mammadzade. “There, they can warm up, eat, charge devices, and simply sit in safety and warmth.”
The UN agency warns that children are particularly at risk from both the cold and the psychological strain of living in darkness. Newborns and infants lose body heat rapidly and face heightened risk of hypothermia and respiratory illness—conditions that can become life-threatening without immediate care.
“The youngest are the most vulnerable,” Mammadzade emphasized, “and without warmth and medical attention, these winter outages could have deadly consequences.”
