The sound of deep, slow breaths echoes up a frozen staircase, followed by footsteps.
Tatiana, 70, has learnt to control her breathing to reduce the strain on her heart as she slowly zigzags her way to the ninth floor of a large apartment block in Kyiv, where she lives.
Power cuts mean the lifts are mainly out of action, and she has spent the past fortnight without heating, instead turning on a gas oven in her kitchen to generate a bit of warmth.
“It is dangerous, but what can you do? Freeze to death?” she said.
Tatiana is among millions of people across Ukraine who have been suffering power outages this winter as Russia brings its war into people’s homes.
Repeated Russian airstrikes against the energy system have cut off heating, electricity and water in different parts of the country, sometimes for days on end.
‘I walk around shivering’
Sky News visited Tatiana’s block of flats to find out how she and other residents are coping in what the Ukrainian authorities have declared to be a state of emergency in the energy sector, as temperatures plunge to as low as -20C (-4F).
“Cold. Cold. It’s very cold,” Tatiana said, wrapped in a long, sheepskin coat.
“I walk around shivering. Especially in the mornings. I wake up and it’s awful.”
Life in Ukraine was already tough enough given the threat of Russian missile and drone attacks that also hit residential areas.
The heating at this 17-storey building was knocked out on 9 January after a strike against a nearby block.
The electricity was also cut, though it has started to return.
Water has been impacted too, with some of the 380 apartments still without working taps.
Back on the staircase, we met a young, pregnant mother and her two-year-old son on what must seem like an endless climb up to the 16th floor.
“Come on, come on, let’s go up,” Daria, 29, said to little Misha.
“We’re almost there now.”
‘It’s simply impossible’
She used the torch on her phone to penetrate the darkness of a corridor that leads to their flat.
The temperature inside was just 3C (37F) after the missile strike.
“You come in, and there is literally steam [icy breath] coming out of your mouth all the time. With a small child, it’s simply impossible,” Daria said.
She and her son have moved in temporarily with relatives, but they return every few days to check their home as well as their next-door neighbour’s flat.
“We came yesterday and stayed for just two or three hours, and I froze so much that my throat started to hurt,” Daria said.
Everyone is struggling – but not alone.
With the very youngest and the oldest most impacted, residents message each other on their phones to find out who is in need and who can offer help.
Those who are fit fetch food, water, and medicine for the less mobile, especially those living higher up the building who cannot manage the icy stairs.
‘We try to be strong’
Dressed in a bright pink coat, Yeva, 23, is still living in her apartment with her boyfriend and their dog.
She helps carry supplies to residents who are stuck in their homes.
“We try to be strong, we try to smile,” she said, speaking in a mixture of English and Ukrainian.
“The best medicine for us is a joke… We always joke with each other. It lifts our atmosphere, our mood, our strength, and helps us keep going.”
She showed us where a burst pipe has flooded and frozen on the seventh floor, leaving a treacherous patch of ice on the ground.
Stopping on the stairs, Yeva smiled and pointed to her feet.
Asked how many pairs of socks she was wearing, she said: “One, two, three. And boots. But at home, I put two more pairs on top. It is extremely cold.”
Everyone we met was swaddled in layers of clothes.
“A must-have rule is trousers tucked into socks and warm sweaters,” Yeva said.
“There are also many T-shirts tucked into trousers. Basically, socks inside socks and even shorts inside socks. That is essential.”
Also vital is a communal effort to try to fix the heating.
Vsevolod, 34, lives on the second floor with his wife and young child, though they have all moved out temporarily because of the crisis.
But he returns to offer help.
He told us how he and a group of neighbours used blow torches to unfreeze some of the pipes that are the very arteries of the building, carrying its water and warmth.
“The emergency crew tried to do it,” he said, frosty breath visible as he spoke.
“They warmed the pipes on the second floor, moved up to the third, and while they were heating there, everything below froze again.
“It was completely pointless. But when many people work at the same time, heating everything in sequence, you get results.”
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Yet still the heating is off, and the icy cold is hard for even the strongest characters to bear.
“I think exhaustion is the hardest part,” Yeva said.
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“Every day you have to fight, you have to survive. You are not really living.
“Days just blur into one another. There is no Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday any more. It is just one continuous day of survival.”
