Ukraine war: The blackouts in Kyiv creep up on you. They’re unpredictable – and life is impossible for some
The blackouts in Kyiv creep up on you. There is no Hollywood moment when the whole city goes dark or when the twinkling lights of a block of flats go out in unison.
Instead, these cuts happen sporadically, with a sense of tiring unpredictability. The electricity will be cut from half a building, but not the other. They will come back on, then go off once more.
One side of the road will be lit up; the other will be dark.
The people of this country, and of this city, are well accustomed to dislocation and nervousness. From the very earliest days of this conflict, it’s been obvious that resilience runs like a seam through the Ukrainian national character.
But this is different. There is no adrenaline rush in coming home to find that your heating doesn’t work and you can’t cook food.
And so we visit Pozniaki, a Kyiv suburb to see how life continues as night falls and the electricity fails.
Nina ushers us into her apartment, using the torch on her mobile phone. She is 66 years old, blessed with a sense of energy and purpose.
Her apartment was damaged by shrapnel at the start of the war but she shrugs at the memory, as if it is a scar to be worth with pride. “I am not afraid of anything. I am at home – why should I be afraid of them? Let them fear us!”
But blackouts are different.
Viktoria
She says the apartment would be almost impossible to inhabit in winter if there were no electricity to power the heating system. “But let’s live and see how it will be.”
Beside her, a candle slowly burns down.
Life does go on. Pet cats and dogs come to see us. Children play in a playground, their parents standing nearby for the moment when the lights go out. And you also realise, once more, how mobile phones have changed our lives – almost everyone now has a torch in their pocket.
At the top of the block is Viktoria, who teaches English and is preparing to conduct lessons by candlelight. She is determined to persevere, despite the travails of life in this city “because I fight for the rights of my people, of my country. I am a patriot. I love my country. I am Kyivite and I am a Ukrainian”.
Serhii
‘We are tenacious, we will survive’
Serhii guides us into the basement of the building. There is a new generator, bought with money clubbed together by the residents. They’ve also invested in some wood-burning stoves.
“I think you can still live here,” he tells me. “It is possible to survive somehow. We are tenacious people. We will survive.”
Tenacious, but also frazzled and fraught. Like the Blitz, when the myth of cheerful stoicism overtook the reality of fear and dread, Kyiv is a blend of emotions. You can, after all, accept that it is your national duty to accept blackouts but also be angry that you are in this situation in the first place.
We meet Ksenia as she is crossing the road with her husband and two children. She is an English teacher living in an apartment near the busy road. When she starts talking the words come rolling out, laced with tiredness and emotion.
“We haven’t got electricity. We haven’t got gas in our half of the building. I’ve got a little child and I can’t cook. I can’t feed him. It’s very bad.
“I can’t work because my work is online. I need electricity, but I haven’t got it. So at the end of this month, I hope I can earn money to buy food for my family.”
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‘Life is impossible’
How difficult is life, I ask.
“It isn’t difficult, it’s impossible. I think it’s impossible to live in such situation, in such a difficult, strange situation, because it’s Kyiv. It’s the capital of Ukraine.
“Can you imagine how people live, for example, in the village or in another small town? It’s very difficult, but it’s better. They can make fire and cook there. We can’t even do this.”
It is all too easy to generalise about Ukrainians as a nation where every pain is accepted, and every hardship is a step towards victory.
But the reality is that life is hard for just about everyone here – emotionally, financially and physically. Across Ukraine, people do dream of victory, but what they also pine for is the simple pleasure of mundane normality.
World
Hamas responds to disarmament reports as health officials say 18 killed in Israeli fire – including people trying to access food
Hamas has said it will not disarm unless an independent Palestinian state is established with Jerusalem as its capital.
The militant group said it was issuing a statement “in response to media reports quoting US envoy Steve Witkoff, claiming [Hamas] has shown willingness to disarm”.
It continued: “We reaffirm that resistance and its arms are a legitimate national and legal right as long as the occupation continues.
“This right is recognised by international laws and norms, and it cannot be relinquished except through the full restoration of our national rights – first and foremost, the establishment of an independent, fully sovereign Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital.”
Hamas also condemned Mr Witkoff’s visit to an aid distribution centre in Gaza on Friday as “nothing more than a premeditated staged show”.
Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy Mr Witkoff and Mike Huckabee, the US ambassador to Israel, visited a centre run by the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).
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Trump envoy Witkoff visits Gaza
Hamas said the trip was “designed to mislead public opinion, polish the image of the occupation, and provide it with political cover for its starvation campaign and continued systematic killing of defenceless children and civilians in the Gaza Strip”.
Mr Witkoff said he spent “over five hours in Gaza”. In a post on X on Friday, he said: “The purpose of the visit was to give [President Trump] a clear understanding of the humanitarian situation and help craft a plan to deliver food and medical aid to the people of Gaza.”
Palestinians wait to receive food from a charity kitchen in Gaza City. Pic: Reuters
Elidalis Burges, a critical care nurse in Gaza, told Sky News she saw the US visit as a “PR stunt” and that the American officials were “just being shown a small portion of what is actually happening”.
“I think the visit to the GHF site was just a controlled visit dictated by the Israeli military,” she said. “If they really wanted people to see what is happening here, they would allow international journalists from around the world to enter.
“They would allow the leaders of the world to come here and see.”
Hamas releases hostage video
It comes as Hamas released a video showing Israeli man, Evyatar David, being held hostage in what appears to be a tunnel.
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Video released of Israeli hostage
Mr David was taken from the Nova Music Festival on 7 October 2023.
His family have given permission for media outlets to show the video.
More than a dozen killed by Israeli fire
Gaza health officials have said 18 people, including eight who were trying to access food, were killed by Israeli fire on Saturday.
Witness Yahia Youssef told Reuters news agency he helped carry three people wounded by gunshots and saw others lying on the ground near a food distribution centre.
In response to questions about several eyewitness accounts of violence at one of its facilities, GHF said “nothing [happened] at or near our sites”.
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The US and Israel-backed GHF has been marred by controversy and fatal shootings ever since it was set up earlier this year.
According to the United Nations’ human rights office, at least 859 people have been killed “in the vicinity” of GHF aid sites since late May.
Dr Tom Adamkiewicz, who is working at a hospital in Gaza, has said Palestinian children, women and men are “being shot at, basically like rabbits”.
It is a “level of barbarity I don’t think the world has seen”, he told Sky News.
The Israel Defence Forces has repeatedly said it “categorically rejects the claims of intentional harm to civilians” and has blamed Hamas militants for fomenting chaos and endangering civilians.
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Gaza deaths increase when aid sites open
The war in Gaza began when Hamas-led militants killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, in an attack on Israel on 7 October 2023 and abducted 251 others. Of those, they still hold around 50, with 20 believed to be alive, after most of the others were released in ceasefires or other deals.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed more than 60,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry, which does not differentiate between militants and civilians in its count.
The world’s most secretive state is a mystery for billions of people – but not Anastasiya Samsonova.
She has returned from a week’s holiday in North Korea.
“We saw nothing terrible there, there is no danger there,” the 33-year-old HR manager tells me.
“Frankly speaking, we really liked it.”
She was part of a group of 15 Russian tourists who were the first foreign visitors to a new seaside resort, which was opened to great fanfare by North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un in June.
Her holiday snaps show a white sand beach, shimmering seas and high-rise hotels. But something’s missing – people.
Anastasiya Samsonova at the Wonsan-Kalma beach resort in North Korea. Pic: Anastasiya Samsonova
There are rows of sun loungers, but not a soul sitting on them. A glittering banquet hall that’s devoid of diners.
That’s because, when it comes to international tourists, the Wonsan-Kalma resort is currently only open to Russians.
“The hotel was absolutely new,” Anastasiya enthuses, unfussed by the absence of others.
“Everything was done very beautifully, a good interior … very developed infrastructure.”
Kim Jong Un and his daughter Kim Ju Ae on the beach in Wonsan at the resort’s opening. Pic: KCNA/Reuters
The North Korean watching a slide at the resort. Pic: KCNA/Reuters
But why not Turkey? Or Thailand?
I gently suggest that people in Britain might be shocked at the idea of a summer break in a country better known for famines and forced labour than parasols and pina coladas.
“We were interested in seeing how people live there,” Anastasiya explains.
“There were a lot of prejudices about what you can and can’t do in North Korea, how you can behave. But actually, we felt absolutely free.”
Pic: Anastasiya Samsonova
Anastasiya is one of a growing number of Russians who are choosing to visit their reclusive neighbour as the two allies continue to forge closer ties following the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine.
Last year, North Korean troops supplied military support in Russia’s Kursk region, and now there is economic cooperation too.
Pic: Anastasiya Samsonova
North Korean produce, including apples and beer, has started appearing on supermarket shelves in Russia’s far east.
And last month, Moscow launched direct passenger flights to Pyongyang for the first time in decades.
But can this hermit nation really become a holiday hotspot?
The Moscow office of the Vostok Intur travel agency believes so. The company runs twice-weekly tours there, and I’m being given the hard sell.
Pic: Danil Biryukov / DVHAB.RU
“North Korea is an amazing country, unlike any other in the world,” director Irina Kobeleva gushes, before listing some unusual highlights.
“It is a country where you will not see any advertising on the streets. And it is very clean – even the asphalt is washed.”
She shows me the brochures, which present a glossy paradise. There are images of towering monuments, pristine golf greens and immaculate ski slopes. But again, no people.
‘There is a huge growing demand among young people,’ Irina Kobeleva says
Ms Kobeleva insists the company’s tours are increasingly popular, with 400 bookings a month.
“Our tourists are mostly older people who want to return to the USSR,” she says, “because there is a feeling that the real North Korea is very similar to what was once in the Soviet Union.
“But at the same time, there is a huge growing demand among young people.”
Sure enough, while we’re chatting, two customers walk in to book trips. The first is Pavel, a young blogger who likes to “collect” countries. North Korea will be number 89.
“The country has opened its doors to us, so I’m taking this chance,” he tells me when I ask why he wants to go.
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For pensioner Tatiana, the reason is sentimental.
“My husband wanted to go there, but now he’s gone. So I want his wish to come true,” she says.
It’ll certainly cost them. One week’s trip that takes in Pyongyang, a circus and the new beach resort, costs roughly £1,500 without flights.
At that price, I suspect most tourists will be content for this secretive state to remain hidden.
World
US manhunt for ‘dangerous’ murder suspect who dropped off baby after four relatives found dead
A car has been found during the search for a man suspected of killing the parents, grandmother and uncle of a baby girl found abandoned in a US state.
Austin Robert Drummond, 28, is suspected of having murdered four relatives in Tennessee – James M Wilson, 21, Adrianna Williams, 20, Cortney Rose, 38, and Braydon Williams, 15, who were identified on Wednesday.
Mr Wilson and Adrianna Williams were the parents of the infant found alive in a car seat in a front yard on Tuesday afternoon.
Police say Drummond then dropped off the baby and made people aware of the child, in an act of “compassion”.
However, officers added Drummond remains on the run and should be considered “armed and dangerous”.
Ms Rose was Adrianna and Braydon Williams’ mother, according to District Attorney Danny Goodman.
No details have been given on how they were murdered.
Vehicles are seen being taken in Lake County, Tennessee on 30 July, near the area where four family members were found dead. Pic: WHBQ/AP
Drummond dropped off the seven-month-old infant and brought attention to people nearby to come get the child, Tennessee Bureau of Investigation Director David Rausch said during a news conference.
The baby is safe and being cared for, according to Stephen Sutton, a spokesperson for the Lake and Dyer county sheriffs.
“While this was an extremely tragic and violent event… there was a sign of compassion, if you will,” Mr Rausch said.
“That tells us that there’s a possibility that Austin may have a sense that there is hope for him to be able to come in and have a conversation about what happened.”
Mr Rausch said he believes it was a targeted attack by Drummond, who had a relationship with the victims and their family.
A relative of the victims posted on Facebook after the deaths, saying the suspect has “literally been nothing short of amazing to us and our kids”, according to our US partner network NBC News. “We all trusted him,” the relative added.
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The unoccupied car that police said Drummond had been driving was found on Friday in Jackson, Tennessee, about 70 miles from where the bodies were found and some 40 miles from where the baby was left in a car seat in a front yard.
The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation has said it obtained warrants for Drummond. He is wanted on four counts of first-degree murder, one count of aggravated kidnapping, and weapons offences.
Authorities offered a $15,000 reward for information leading to his arrest.
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Drummond was convicted of one count of aggravated robbery in August 2014, according to public records. His sentence ended in September 2024, according to Tennessee Department of Correction records.
He was charged criminally for activities inside the prison, including attempted murder, after he completed the sentence that put him behind bars, District Attorney Mr Goodman said.
Drummond was out on bond on the other charges at the time of the killings, he added.
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