Dnipro, Sunday 25 Jan, morning
It's cold in Ukraine still, this week will be another cold one, snowing again at the moment in Dnipro. We have never had this much snow in the 11 years I have lived in Ukraine, and it's certainly the longest really cold streak I can remember in Dnipro which is normally quite temperate due to the huge river.
For those who are interested, we are now sitting around 1.5-2 hours of electricity on, 10 hours off throughout Dnipro, and most of the country.
Attacks continue daily, and every day more energy infrastructure is damaged, more often now destroyed. Water pipes in the bigger apartments are freezing and bursting, why they haven't been drained I have no idea. Kiev is worst for this.
Dtek have stopped repairing after attacks if a lot of spares are required, openly stating the need to keep equipment for after a peace is declared, as they know after every repair, there is another attack. The dtek guys are hero's, I have said it many times, and always give them a tip when I see them working in the cold, struggling to get electricity working with botched up repairs.
The cold is also having an effect now, in our area several transformers are failing interfering with electrical supply even when it's available. One of our homes hasn't had electricity for a week. I went and bought three gas water heaters yesterday and our handymen will install those in the homes in that area to restore hot water for them tomorrow. We still not too bad, but I will do the same at our main house to give me redundancy too after the others are done.
The river is iced over, many people out fishing, a pastime I can understand in the sun on a lovely day out in the Indian Ocean with a full esky and my sons, but will never understand in the middle of a river sitting on freezing ice to catch river fish. Thousands do though, more power to them.
70-80 percent of the time we are now under alarms, drones mostly, interspersed with the odd rocket hitting weapons storage or pvo crews. No one even misses a heart beat when rockets land nearby. No one goes to shelters, no one runs in panic as they did in the early days. The Geran drones have morphed, they are doing a lot more damage, seems they are much faster and carrying a bigger payload now too. Yesterday we were driving back from the right bank to the left and the sirens were blaring as usual, and a PVO crew, consisting of a mistubishi Ute with a 50 mm cannon on the back took up position in the centre of the bridge and started attacking a couple drones. No one stopped traffic on the bridge at all, but that crew make that bridge an absolute target. Every one of those 50 mm shells also lands and they were firing across the river and those shells must be hitting the embankments which are full of apartments. I have never once heard of one of those crews actually hit a drone. For all the cokehead talk of interceptor drones and real air defence shooting down 80-90 percent of targets, I have not heard of a single instance of a downed drone or rocket for months, nor know anyone who has. We all long for the good old days when a little old babushka was bringing down missiles with a jar of pickles.
Prices are now slowly rising, shops still have issues with imported goods. I have seen some queues at petrol stations, but haven't had any issue getting fuel when I need it, so not sure why.
No one here is watching the theatre in the uae or paying any attention to Zelenksy's rants. No one cares any more. The fact is, this war will end because of money as I have said for a while. Ukraine has none, and as I thought it doesn't seem like the eu can float its bonds. As an investor, who would be stupid enough to buy them..... So, Ukraine will run out of money. The push for peace now by the usa is simply to put on a theatre to give Trump the room to send more money to Ukraine by claiming peace is just around the corner, so be needs to help Ukraine to hold on, but whatever he sends, it will not be enough. Soldiers won't fight without being paid, workers won't work without being paid, and protests will go on steroids when they can't pay pensions next month. For that matter, the usa economy is looking far closer to collapse than either Russia or even Ukraine's...
Anyhow, that's my take on the situation. We are fine, have all we need, continue to help wherever we can, and I will resume evac driving this coming week after being given the all clear to do so after a little incident a week ago.
The war was lost a year and a half ago, hopefully soon the fighting will stop. Even if it stopped today what is left of Ukraine is not sustainable, and the talk of 800 billion funds to rebuild Ukraine is rubbish. Again theatre for the masses. No one has any money to help Ukraine, everyone here knows they will be on their own, and that's how they want it anyhow. They will rebuild, they will survive, and until that time, all I care about is my family and friends, and those around us who are in need of help.
We are more than half way through winter now, another month will hopefully see the real cold end, and with the arrival of spring, hope will return. Roll on spring.
