When Russian strikes cut off the power, heating, and water to swathes of the Ukrainian capital in -20C temperatures, Denys Biletsky was prepared.
Following a round of particularly intense Russian barrages two years earlier, Biletsky had convinced his neighbours to chip in together to install solar panels and batteries on the roof of their high-rise apartment block.
As Ukraine accuses Russia of trying to freeze the population into submission with its most intense attacks on the energy network of the entire war, more and more people in Kyiv are fundraising and pooling cash to buy alternative sources of shared electricity.
READ ALSO: DR Congo Forces Launch Attacks On Multiple Fronts Against M23
“Without backup power, our building simply wouldn’t be able to function,” Biletsky, the 42-year-old head of his building’s homeowners’ association, told AFP.
On the roof of the 25-storey block, overlooking a sea of residential towers stretching across the horizon, he dusted fresh snowfall off dozens of solar panels with a wooden brush.
The 400-odd residents pooled 700,000 hryvnias ($16,200) to buy and install them, along with the batteries and other required equipment.
Russian missile and drone barrages have pushed Kyiv into its most serious energy crisis of the war.
Electricity is turned off for hours on end to ration supplies, and more than 1,000 of Kyiv’s 12,000 high-rise residential buildings have been without heating for the past month after a heating station was destroyed.
The back-up supply in Biletsky’s block meant the lift — unlike in many buildings — was still shuttling up and down, and electric pumps were able to send water to the top floors.
Without it, there would be none above the ninth floor, said Biletsky.
“After the inverter was installed, we have constant heating, hot and cold water,” said Tetyana Taran, who lives on the 20th floor.
The inverter is the device that automatically draws supplies from the battery when the mains switch off.
“The fact that I also get to use the lift is great,” the 47-year-old added.
In her building in central Kyiv, Tetyana Chernyshenko is another person who persuaded her neighbours to club together for a generator.
