Millions of Ukrainians are bracing for a dark and freezing winter as relentless Russian strikes tear apart the country's power grid, forcing families to ration every precious hour of electricity.
Since October, Russia has intensified its assault on Ukraine's energy system while Ukraine has struck back at Russian oil refineries, feeding a cycle of destruction that has left homes colder and darker than last year.
The rolling blackouts are unpredictable and relentless. In one seventh-floor Kyiv flat, single mother Daryna Kulchytska pulls on a heavy coat and layers of clothing as the temperature drops indoors and out, racing to serve dinner and finish her own work before the power vanishes. For two hours the lights burn, then for eight they don't.
Just before 7:30pm, a click signals the end. The lift stops, the taps run dry because water needs electricity to reach the flat, and the family gathers by torchlight and LED candles for a game of Uno before an early night.
Kyiv has been hit hardest, with metro trains and trolleybuses sometimes frozen mid-route, while hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians have lost power across the country in recent weeks.
At one of Ukraine's largest power stations, a ballistic missile strike at 3am left the plant a ruin of twisted metal and broken pipes, its turbines buried in rubble and the entire site knocked offline.
Crews are racing to repair it under almost unimaginable danger, forced to dive for cover as air raid sirens sound every 15 to 30 minutes, sometimes hiding in the foundations of the plant's towering chimneys when there is no time to reach a shelter.
Ukraine still has enough generating capacity to meet demand, but its power lines and substations are being destroyed faster than they can be fixed. Russia now deploys so-called waiter drones that cling to pylons and cables, lying undetected until they are detonated.
Rebuilding the shattered station will take at least until next summer, because workers under sustained bombardment manage only one or two productive hours a day. Since August, near-daily attacks on power facilities have claimed several lives every week.
Many families are abandoning the capital or the country entirely to escape the cold, and for the mother in Kyiv the choice is agonizing, torn between staying near friends and family and fleeing the mounting hardship.
The strain is taking a toll on her mental health, and her daughter suffers nightmares, yet the family refuses to surrender. Better to live without light, but without Russians, the mother says, is a trade many Ukrainians are prepared to make.