Stop the energocide!
The energy crisis and anti-blackout protests. New data on poverty levels. Let a thousand generators bloom
In 2019, Zelensky ran for president with the slogan ‘an end to the era of poverty’. This has become somewhat of a meme nowadays on Ukrainian social media.
One cruel spin on the slogan goes like this:
An end to the era of poverty. A start to the era of survival!
New guns, less butter
On July 23, the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology published a new poll showing that the amount of Ukrainian who support a negotiated end to the war has tripled, rising from 10% in May 2023 to 32% now.
Of course, such polls in wartime reveal less about the amount of people who actually think this (this itself being a metaphysically complex category), and more about the amount of people willing to take the risk of publicly stating such an opinion in a country where it could have quite high costs.
In any case, the tendency is clear. But apart from disappointment after the 2023 counter-offensive and Russian successes at the frontline, there are other factors at play. For many, the war is something they have a relation to only through the television.
For many, there are much more pressing issues. I wrote a couple weeks back how a National Bank investigation found that Ukrainians have been spending less money by cutting back on food. The liberal publication Weekly Mirror ordered a poll from the Razumkov Centre on Ukrainians’ economic predicament.
According to this poll, whose results were posted today, July 25, only 8.6% of Ukrainians answered they were able to pay for anything they needed, or almost anything.
Meanwhile, 32.2% answered they were only able to pay for food products, and that buying clothes is ‘difficult now’. Another 9.1% weren’t even able to pay for food. 48% of those polled answered they were only able to pay for food and clothes, and couldn’t afford to buy household appliances.
In other words, 40% are at the biological subsistence minimum or below it, and another 50% are only able to pay for basic necessities.
When asked about their monthly incomes, 66% of Ukrainians answered they earned less than 18,000 hryvnia - $436 USD a month. Almost half of this category earned less than 8,000 hryvnia a month - under $200 USD.
By the way, these figures are fairly optimistic. According to Ukraine’s state statistics, in 2021 (the last available year), 73.5% of Ukrainians earned less than $290 a month (8000 hryvnia or less).
Lights out
It’s in the realm of energy, traditionally a lightning rod of social discontent, that real perturbations have been occurring.
There’ve been no shortage of apocalyptic predictions from the leaders of Ukraine’s energy sector, who generally try to reassure their audiences that talk of Ukrainian energy crises is Russian disinformation.
The head of Yasno, one of Ukraine’s biggest energy suppliers, stated on June 29 that Ukrainians may have to survive amidst 12 hour blackouts this winter. Other energy experts predicted that anyone living above the 9th floor won’t have electricity or water this winter. The kyivpost also wrote on July 7 that there might not be enough electricity for heating and water this winter.
Throughout July, Kyivans have been complaining of 7 hour blackouts and only 2 hours of constant electricity on the DTEK facebook page, Ukraine’s biggest energy supplier:
The lights are off from 9:00 to 16:00. At 18:00 it was turned off again. So 7/2?!! What kind of gradual switching on of devices can we talk about?!! I turn on everything I can at once! In 2 hours, neither the lamps nor the power banks had time to charge - Natalya Skrypnyk
You ignore the requests, you don’t change the schedules of the 2nd group, we sit for 13 hours straight without light, but in other groups this is not the case!! When will there be order! Why is there no information about repairs?! When can we expect the outages to end? - Nastya Gulyai
Electricity was turned off at the Krivoy Rog coal mine on June 23, leading to an emergency situation. From 19 July, street lights have been turned off in Zaporozhye to save energy. Mobile connection has also worsened drastically during blackouts. Ukrainians have also been unable to pay by card in shops due to energy blackouts. Many Kyivans have been complaining of constantly broken ATMs due to intermittent blackouts. Residents of Dnepropetrovsk have been publishing videos of supermarket shelves without any milk and meat because of the blackouts.
The carnage among pensioners this winter will be unimaginable. There have already been casualties. A man near Kyiv died in a lift due to a blackout on June 28.
On July 12, Irpen’ began implementing water rations due to the heat and energy crisis. On July 18, several transformers spontaneously combusted due to the heat, worsening the energy situation.
Ukrainians have been describing the energy crisis on tiktok:
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