A genocide against Ukrainians is unfolding right now.
It already has a name: "Kholodomor" (exhaustion through cold)
This crime is being deliberately committed by Russia.
In legal terms, it has a clear definition - genocide.
Under Article II of the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, one of the defining acts of genocide is:
"Deliberately inflicting on a group of people conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part."
Many Ukrainian cities - Kyiv foremost among them - have been without electricity, heating, and water for the second week in a row, amid severe frosts.
What does this mean?
It means people are being condemned to death by Russia.
This is what is happening:
▪️ Elderly people cannot leave their apartments to buy food or water because elevators do not work - or because they are physically unable to walk down the stairs;
▪️ No communication: mobile phones are dead, there is no way to call for help or an ambulance;
▪️ Sick people cannot use life-sustaining medical equipment because there is no electricity at home;
▪️ Mothers of small kids carry their children and strollers up staircases in high-rise buildings - along with water and food;
▪️ No hot meals and no possibility to cook food at home;
▪️ Sewer system failures, creating critical and dangerous conditions;
▪️ Illness caused by extreme cold and the inability to stay warm;
▪️ Children cannot attend schools because there is no heating. Distance learning is also impossible without electricity;
▪️ Kindergartens are closed, mothers cannot work, earn money to feed their children;
▪️ Stray animals are freezing to death on the streets;
▪️ Even pets are dying from the cold - parrots, aquarium fish, animals kept in terrariums;
▪️ Animals in zoos are freezing;
▪️ Collections of rare plants in Kyiv’s botanical gardens have frozen and died;
▪️ Small businesses are earning nothing, forced to spend money on generators and fuel - causing direct losses to the economy;
▪️ Severe harm to the environment and public health due to the constant operation of massive numbers of generators;
▪️ Public transport functions far worse due to power outages; electric transport does not operate at all, leaving people unable to reach work, doctors, or essential services;
▪️ Burst pipes and freezing temperatures are destroying homes, making them uninhabitable;
▪️ Hospitals are forced to cancel planned surgeries, operating in emergency mode and at full capacity;
▪️ Rates of depression, anxiety disorders, and burnout are sharply increasing.
Russia wants to make large Ukrainian cities uninhabitable.
This is a humanitarian catastrophe deliberately caused by Russia.
‼️ Russia is committing energy genocide against Ukrainians
Russia's campaign of strikes against Ukraine's energy sector during the harshest frosts is not a series of "episodes" and not a "military necessity." It is a systematic operation aimed at destroying living conditions. Repeated attacks on power generation and networks trigger a predictable chain - blackouts → heating shutdown → water supply problems - precisely in winter, when harm to civilians is at its maximum.
Reuters, citing UNICEF and the IFRC, directly warns about the risks of hypothermia for children due to the lack of electricity and heat. Russia strikes not only 'visible' power plants, but also high-voltage transmission nodes - substations and power lines that maintain regional power flows. This creates an effect of "cutting" the energy system: even when part of the generation is preserved, damaged nodes make it inaccessible where the shortage is most acute, multiplying humanitarian consequences. In its statement at the IAEA Board of Governors on Ukraine, European External Action Service condemned Russia's attacks on energy infrastructure and noted separately that damage to key substations has forced Ukrainian nuclear power plants to take emergency measures.
This directly concerns nuclear safety. In its regular updates, the IAEA emphasizes that the degradation of the power grid during the war poses a serious threat to the safety of operating nuclear power plants and to the situation around the occupied Zaporizhzhia NPP, which has repeatedly lost its external power supply. When strikes disrupt the operation of substations and power lines, the likelihood of a regime in which stations depend on emergency power sources increases - one of the most dangerous scenarios in terms of preventing a man-made accident.
‼️ What Russia is doing is a war crime. International humanitarian law prohibits attacks on objects that are indispensable for the survival of the civilian population, as well as actions aimed at depriving civilians of basic living conditions (water, heat, critical services) - this is enshrined in customary law (ICRC Rule 54) and in Additional Protocol I (Article 54). The UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine warns that repeated strikes on energy infrastructure put civilians at serious risk and are critical to the survival of the civilian population.
‼️ Russia's attacks on Ukraine's energy infrastructure bear the characteristics of the crime of genocide, a war crime, and a crime against humanity, as they predictably lead to mass suffering and deaths of civilians and are a policy of "destruction of living conditions."
Russia is committing genocide. Right now. In Europe.