In a report last week, the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine (HRMMU) stated that attacks by Russian armed forces on energy facilities in Ukraine may have violated international humanitarian law. Such attacks raise the possibility that Russia is creating conditions in which it is extremely difficult for Ukrainians to fully exercise their basic rights as enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Attacks such as those that took place between March 22 and August 26, 2024, have had devastating consequences for the population. Blackouts of up to 18 hours a day, as a result of these attacks, create numerous problems and significantly affect residents’ daily lives.
First and foremost, the lack of electricity leads to interruptions in water supply. In such conditions, it becomes quite problematic, if not impossible, to prepare even the simplest meals, or to carry out everyday hygiene procedures. Moreover, sometimes during emergency outages, mobile phone service is also lost, which largely cuts off access to information, especially air alerts (including information about the type of aircraft being used to fire or reconnoiter the area) and news.
Both public and private enterprises, primarily medical facilities and grocery stores, are forced to provide electricity to keep themselves running using expensive generators, often purchased by private individuals. This not only creates inconvenience for workers, but also significantly increases the overall noise level in the city and in residential areas. One of the most dangerous consequences is interruptions in public lighting: traffic lights and street lamps do not work in the de-energized parts of cities. Thus, staying in the city outside of daylight hours becomes downright dangerous, due to the high probability of traffic accidents and the possibility of committing crimes in the dark. Public electric transport such as trams, trolleybuses, and subways also do not work during blackouts, making it difficult for citizens to get around and creating a real collapse in cities with dense traffic.
Working remotely has become common since the start of the invasion in February 2022, but blackouts force workers to choose between working during hours when there is electricity (not always during the day) or looking for adaptations. In any case, the disruption of the work of many employees may have further impact on the economy in the future.
The education sector is one of the most affected. Since the beginning of the war, some schools and higher education institutions in the frontline regions have switched to online learning, and some higher education institutions have shortened semesters and introduced working Saturdays to avoid the foreseeable difficulties of longer power outages expected in winter. In addition to the measures already taken, the emergency outages are causing severe hardship to both students and teachers. The need to interrupt classes and hide in shelters, as well as power and water outages, creates problems for students in other educational institutions that have chosen to operate offline, mostly schools and kindergartens, to receive quality education.
Dissatisfaction with the problems caused by the power outages and the constant threat to life are forcing some Ukrainians, especially those with children, to leave their homes and move to other countries. The moods of those who remained are becoming darker, with many no longer believing that the situation will improve, especially after official forecasts of up to 18 hours of blackouts per day in winter (unofficial forecasts promise up to 22 hours of blackouts per day) and the realization that everyone is left to deal with the problem alone in the face of a power shortage. Thus, trust in the government is decreasing.
It is important to note that the war itself, the inability to fully realize the basic rights (such as the right to education, work, a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of them and their families, etc.) and the continuous stress that Ukrainians have been experiencing since the beginning of the Covid-19 epidemic in 2020 have also had a certain impact on the psyche of people living in Ukraine. According to Ukrainian psychologist Serhiy Kalynchuk, “There are no people without mental disorders left in the country.” What Ukraine is going through now will have an impact not only on the physical but also on the mental health of the nation.
The latest of the massive attacks on energy infrastructure, which took place on August 26, resulted in emergency and stabilization blackouts in many regions of the country for more than two weeks. During this time, the country’s residents, who had not yet fully recovered from the extremely hot summer, which was again exacerbated by power outages and water shortages, were forced to adapt to the conditions and overcome all of the above difficulties. However, despite the constant work of the State Emergency Service of Ukraine to restore the power system, its temporary “stabilization” has proven to be quite fragile. New emergency blackouts may be introduced after any new shelling, which, especially in the frontline regions (such as Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia, Dnipro, Sumy, Kherson, Donetsk, Mykolaiv, Chernihiv, and Luhansk oblasts), can be up to several per day, if not more. Thus, the daily lives of Ukrainians, who are forced to live under constant stress, are increasingly complicated by the war, and the exercise of their basic rights is under constant threat.
