SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina : Vildana Muteveli and her two young children, as well as her elderly cousins, huddled in her apartment. As artillery shells ripped the roof off their building and nearly killed them, they had no heat, electricity, or running water.

Mutevelić made a lamp out of used engine oil, water and a shoelace for a wick. A plastic spoon, she discovered, when lit, worked well as a temporary flashlight if she ventured outside. Plastic sheets covered the blown-out windows, a flimsy buffer against the bitter cold. “The electricity failed right away,” Mutevelić, 70, said through a translator.

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who has accused Russia of “energy terrorism,” said earlier this week that about 9 million people were without electricity. The country`s prosecutor general, Andriy Kostin, told The Associated Press that Russia`s deliberate targeting of Ukraine`s essential utilities is another act of genocide, the most heinous of war crimes. “We are convinced that the crimes (Russia) are committing in Ukraine bear all the hallmarks of genocide,” Kostin said in a statement.

To make civilians suffer and die as a way to force their government to yield isn`t a new wartime strategy. Families, neighbours and entire communities band together, brainstorm and resist.

Larysa Shevtsova’s apartment in Ukraine’s southern city of Kherson lost its electricity and water. But gas still flowed into a stove in the cramped kitchen. With two fire-resistant bricks and advice from a family friend, she and her husband were able to keep the temperature bearable in their home without being confined to the kitchen. They`d set a brick directly on one of the stove`s four burners, the three others covered by large pots and a kettle. Shevtsova, her husband and two sons, one of them 3 years old, huddled around the brick for warmth that would last for about 30 minutes. “We use this method to heat the room,” Shevtsova said.

The Associated Press and the PBS series “Frontline,” drawing from a variety of sources, have independently documented more than 40 attacks by Russia on Ukraine`s electrical power, heat, water and telecommunications facilities since February. From east to west, Russia has unleashed an onslaught of drone and missile attacks meant to inflict maximum damage to Ukraine`s energy infrastructure with a drastic uptick in strikes since September, according to AP`s analysis of the data.

“It is purposefully attacking Ukraine`s critical infrastructure, destroying the systems that provide heat and light to the Ukrainian people during the coldest, darkest part of the year.” Russia isn`t slowing down its attacks on Ukraine`s energy grid.

“It is absolutely the case that terrorizing the civilian population, to break their morale, to get them to demand of their leaders that they surrender, is not a form of military necessity,” said Mary Ellen O`Connell, a University of Notre Dame law professor and expert on international law. “Even if you`re attacking a military objective, if the intent in doing so is to terrorize civilians then you have committed a war crime.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said the attacks are a response to an Oct. 8 truck bombing of the bridge connecting Russia’s mainland with the Crimean Peninsula, which Moscow annexed from Ukraine in 2014.

The World Health Organization has estimated that 2 million to 3 million Ukrainians will leave their homes this winter in search of warmth and safety.

Since the start of Russia`s invasion in February, Moscow has launched 168 missile strikes on Ukraine`s energy infrastructure, with nearly 80 percent of the attacks occurring in October, November and December, according to Kostin. Ukraine`s state-controlled Naftogaz oil and gas company reported earlier this month that more than 350 of its facilities and 450 kilometers (279 miles) of gas pipelines had sustained damage.

NEC Ukrenergo has described on Facebook how hundreds of its technicians and specialists are dispatched to restore power when it`s knocked out by “patching what can be patched and replacing what can be replaced.” But it can be at times a Sisyphean task. Russian shelling in early December cut off power in much of the newly Liberated Ukrainian city of Kherson just days after it had been restored. A glaring difference between Sarajevo and Ukraine is the Western world`s response.

Fearing more bloodshed and seeking a political solution, the United States and the European Community, the European Union`s predecessor, backed a U.N. arms embargo on the former Yugoslavia that blocked the Bosnian government from acquiring weapons to fight back against Serb attacks. The United States has delivered or pledged billions of dollars in military aid, including a Patriot surface-to-air missile battery, the most powerful such weapon committed to Ukraine yet.

And what we got back then was an embargo on weapons,” said Mirza Mutevelić, the 38-year-old son of Vildana Mutevelić. Lamija Polic, a retired nurse in Sarajevo, dodged bullets to get water and used a metal garbage can as a stove. “So we burned everything we had: slippers, shoes, old clothes, books, you name it,” Polic said.
You build a fire, but it lasts for just a few minutes and then you wait until you can no longer stand the cold to build another one. I remember that our blankets and sheets were so cold that you had a sense they were wet.”

Some residents of Kherson, a city on the Dnieper River in southern Ukraine, are facing similar hardship. As they retreated in November, Russian forces wrecked power lines and other key infrastructure, sending thousands of Kherson`s newly liberated residents into the dark. Larysa, who declined to use her last name for fear of reprisals against her family, told the AP in late November that at times she felt like she was having a nervous breakdown.

She and her husband wanted to buy a portable generator, but prices had spiked from about $190 to more than $1,600, Larysa said. “I am tired of all of this and want my old life back,” Larysa said. In Kyiv, Ukraine`s capital, Mariia Modzolevska has relied on a generator and a car battery to keep her cafe, Blukach, up and running through the almost daily power outages. An old, recharged car battery keeps the credit card machine running.

“We were making money until the first drone attack and blackouts, then income dropped by 30-plus percent,” she said. Boichenko bought a small tent for $10 and set it up on top of her bed. Inside the tent, on top of a few blankets, Boichenko was 3 to 4 degrees warmer than the temperature of her room. Boichenko said she doesn`t plan to take down her tent until spring. “I will sleep in it because it is warm,” she said.

Source: AP News