She has no heating, electricity or hot water in her apartment in Kyiv - the temperature inside is between eight and eleven degrees. She tries to stay warm with several layers of thick sweaters and plastic bottles filled with water heated on the gas stove. The bottles become small heat sources she keeps next to her body - they are not really enough, but at least they are something.
Lidija Telesjuk is just one of many battling the bitter cold in Ukraine. Next week, new cold snaps are in the forecast. She can't remember it being this cold since World War II.
"It's terrible. We will have a hard time surviving," she told AFP.
Conscious strategy
According to the principles of international law agreed upon by the international community, civilians should be protected in armed conflicts. But during the winter, the aggressor Russia has intensified its attacks on Ukraine's electricity and heating supplies. This is a highly deliberate strategy, according to Oscar Jonsson, a researcher in war studies at the Swedish National Defense University and an expert on Russian warfare.
"The purpose is best described as a form of terrorist bombing," he says.
Since Ukraine has limited air defence, Ukrainian forces are concentrated in the most important places, which means that the entire country cannot be protected. The electricity and energy chain becomes potential targets for Russia - a society without energy is extremely vulnerable. Moscow's likely hope is that Ukraine will run out of resources and give up.
"If you don't have electricity and water, you leave. Then there are no conditions for economic activity, resilience worsens in general, and Ukraine becomes significantly weaker in the longer term," Jonsson points out.
"I have lived my life"
A couple of blocks from Lidija Telesjuk lives 88-year-old Esfir Rudminska. She sits in bed under several blankets, with a battery-powered reading lamp running. Underneath the blankets, she also has plastic bottles of hot water in them. Despite the cold, she is most nervous about the bombings.
"You can get through anything. You eat a piece of bread with tea and you're okay. But my nerves can't take it (the bombs). I'm trying to hold on," she tells AFP and continues:
"Sometimes, when no one else is home, I cry. It feels easier then, even though I'm not a 'cryer.' I'm 88 years old, I've already lived my life."
