Electric trams are running again in Kyiv, and electric scooters dot the sidewalks. With curfew extended to midnight, the streets are bright and buzzing. Portable generators, nearly impossible to find as they flew off the shelves in December, are being sold at half price.

The Kremlin’s campaign to break the Ukrainian will to fight by turning winter into a weapon and knocking out power ultimately failed — but there were moments when it seemed that all might be lost.

The darkest week in a long, cold season came in mid-November, when Russian missiles streaked in from three directions, bearing down on Ukrainian power plants.

Energy officials gathered in a secret bunker in Kyiv and watched alarms flash on the large screens mapping the country’s energy grid as critical substations, thermal power plants and hydroelectric facilities all went dark. Then something happened they had never seen before over weeks of bombardment: All of the nation’s nuclear power plants were thrown into a blackout.

Within seconds, control rods positioned above reactors at Ukraine’s three working plants dropped into cores to absorb neutrons and stop the chain reaction that could lead to a meltdown. The reactors, which provide 50 per cent of the country’s energy, went offline.

At the same time, Russian missiles and drones severed Ukraine’s connection to the European grid, a critical source of energy that has helped Ukraine prevent collapse in its own grid.

On a continent of light, Ukraine was an island of darkness. Millions had no heat. The toilets did not flush. Lines formed at old wells as people lugged jugs of water to pitch-dark apartments in Kyiv. Internet service went down for many. Officials discussed mass evacuation plans. “These were some of the most difficult days,” Ukraine’s energy minister, Herman Galushchenko, said in an interview.

Given the depth of the crisis — outlined in more than a dozen interviews with senior energy officials, utility workers, government officials and military intelligence — it is all the more remarkable that as winter has released its icy grip, Ukraine’s power grid not only survives but was even able, in early March, to produce surplus energy for the first time in months.

Major challenges to the power supply, however, may still loom.

Staving off the relentless bombardments has dramatically depleted Ukraine’s air defences, newly leaked Pentagon documents show, and there is concern that Russian bombers may soon be able to prowl the skies of Ukraine’s cities unscathed.

But for now, rather than breaking the Ukrainian spirit, the bombardments have only made Ukrainians more determined.

Some 97 per cent of Ukrainians surveyed now say they believe they will win the war, and 74 per cent predict that Ukraine will retain all the territory within the borders internationally recognised in 1991. The national survey released in March was conducted by the National Rating Group.

Still, there remains much work to be done. The Russian assaults destroyed or damaged more than 40 per cent of the nation’s energy infrastructure, and it will cost billions of dollars to repair.

New York Times News Service