Read the daily news to learn English

Greek authorities seek answers after six killed in Athens apartment block explosion

Greek authorities say they are trying to discover what caused a two-storey apartment block in the heart of ancient Athens to collapse “in a matter of seconds”, killing six people. Emergency teams found the victims, including four American tourists, on Saturday, more than 24 hours after the early morning explosion in the historic Plaka district. The fire service said the bodies of three women and three men had been found, but stopped short of identifying them. A Briton and his Greek wife, 77 and 78, who lived in a flat on the building’s upper floor, were among those killed, the Guardian was told. “The bodies have been taken to the morgue where postmortems will be conducted,” the city’s vice-mayor, Paris Charlaftis, said in a telephone interview from the blast scene. “Our focus now is on the explosion’s cause. What could have happened to bring the building down in a matter of seconds?” Rescuers had deployed thermal cameras and geophones, used to detect deep subsonic frequencies, in the hope of finding survivors. Earth-moving machines and specially trained search dogs were brought in to move and comb mounds of rubble through the night. Before the bodies were pulled from the ruins on Saturday, police put the missing at six, saying four were Americans staying in a short-term rental on the building’s first floor. Two brothers and their wives, all four were due to fly to the US on Friday, just hours after the explosion. “When they failed to turn up for the flight they had checked into only a day earlier, that gave us a further lead,” a source said. “It became clearer that they must have been there when the blast occurred.” The Briton, a talented artist, who lived with his wife on the second floor, was described by Charlaftis as being partially disabled. “He had kinetic issues, and it was thought likely they, too, were in the building [at the time of the blast].” Nestled around the foot of the fifth-century BC Acropolis, Plaka is especially popular with tourists. The picturesque district draws thousands of visitors daily, with many staying overnight in the hotels and short-term rentals in neoclassical houses and small apartment blocks along its alleyways and narrow streets. The mayor of Athens, Haris Doukas, who rushed to 15 Lysikratous, where the mid-20th-century building had once stood, was quick to describe the incident as an “unprecedented disaster”. At least three people were known to have been injured when the explosion occurred at 7.30am, shattering the windows of nearby buildings and scattering debris far and wide. A motorist driving down Lysikratous described how his car was lifted into the air by the sheer force of a blast that some in the neighbourhood likened to an earthquake, others to a bomb. Emergency workers could be seen hastily removing two women on stretchers from a building next door who had been wounded by flying debris. Speculation is rife that a gas leak triggered the collapse but officials said there were many “cogent theories” at play. Fears of the leak emanating from the first-floor short-term rental was among them. As part of efforts to address a burgeoning housing crisis, Greece’s centre-right government has sought to ban short-term rentals in Plaka – clamping down on permits and tightening regulations. On Saturday, as speculation mounted over the cause of the blast, criticism grew over the ability to “properly control” establishments that were often unregulated. “This awful incident will fuel further debate over who inspects short-term rentals that no one who lives in Plaka wants anyway,” said Giorgos Zafeiriou, an architect who heads the local residents’ committee. “Hotels have chambers that regulate them but who inspects and controls Airbnb and serviced apartments that often may not be up to par?” Civil protection crews and emergency disaster management teams have been ordered to remain on site until the cause of the explosion is found, officials said. “It was a huge explosion, so getting to the bottom of it must now be the priority,” added Zafeiriou. “Six people have lost their lives.”

US strikes on Ecuadorian fishing boats raise humanitarian concerns but Trump admin not wavering

While the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, was being decorated in Quito by Ecuador’s president for “helping to promote peace in the region”, 10 Ecuadorian fishers whose boat had been blown up by US forces were adrift in the eastern Pacific. On 8 September, a day before Rubio arrived, a US patrol vessel intercepted the fishing boat Don Rufo in international waters near Ecuador. “The gringos were all armed as if they were going to war,” said the boat’s captain, Mero Calderón, 50. “I tried to show them our catch to prove that we were there working, but they wouldn’t listen,” he added. “They brought two huge bombs aboard, took us to their ship, handcuffed and blindfolded us, and blew our boat to pieces,” said Calderón, who along with five other fishers, was handed over to local authorities. But another 10 crew members were fishing farther out to sea in a smaller boat that was not equipped to make it back to shore. The Ecuadorian navy only rescued them on 10 September, when Rubio was already in Peru preparing to return to the US. US Southern Command posted an edited 14-second video of the operation and said “intelligence confirmed” that the vessel was being used by a gang as a “floating refuelling station” for speedboats allegedly carrying drugs – which the fishers deny. It was one of eight operations involving Ecuadorian boats in just more than two weeks – the latest on 16 September – to follow the same pattern. Unlike the nearly 70 US airstrikes in the Pacific and Caribbean that have killed 234 people since last year, crews were removed before the vessels were sunk. Also, rather than unilateral US attacks, the new wave of operations has the open support of Ecuador’s far-right president, Daniel Noboa, who is calling them “joint operations”. Donald Trump has compared the drug trafficking operations to the campaign against the Islamic state. “Like ISIS, they should be killed, exiled or detained as enemy combatants without the possibility of release, which is what we’re doing,” Trump said on Tuesday. Some analysts see the shift as an indication that the US’s military strategy against drug trafficking in Latin America has entered a new phase. “Noboa has offered Ecuador as a ‘laboratory’ for the implementation of this new phase,” said Will Freeman, a fellow for Latin America studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. Although Ecuador does not produce cocaine like neighbouring Colombia and Peru, over the past decade it has become a major trafficking hub because of its access to the Pacific, including the area where the attacks on boats have been taking place. Noboa has responded with a controversial “iron-fist” approach to the gangs, issuing repeated states of emergency and expanding the role of the armed forces. This crackdown however has done little to reduce violence, and instead has eroded human rights. The most notable example of human rights abuse came last year in the case of the “Guayaquil Four”, the forced disappearance of four Afro-Ecuadorian boys between the age of 11 and 15. All four boys were found dead, there bodies charred and dismembered. Despite pushback from voters, Noboa signed an agreement with the White House authorising joint operations and granting US military personnel involved in counter-narcotics operations immunity from criminal prosecution. The operations have also extended to land, with US troops taking part in raids last Thursday. “Noboa is interested in the optics of a very lethal crackdown and in making Ecuador a place where the Trump administration can refine those methods and show them off,” said Freeman, who has also reported on the boat attacks in Ecuador for the New Yorker magazine. Trump has pressured Latin American presidents to join an anti-drug cartel coalition he created called Shield of the Americas. With Peru and Colombia recently joining, the group now includes all but the few countries still governed by the left, such as Mexico and Brazil – where a far-right senator is a serious contender in October’s election. So far, the coalition’s primary goal appears to have been increasing joint operations against alleged drug traffickers. Adam Isacson, director for defence oversight at the Washington Office on Latin America, expects joint operations to expand across the region. Isacson stressed that though more people are being turned over to local authorities instead of killed, the US is “still doing the bad old stuff”. On 19 September, four people were killed in the Caribbean. As with the other airstrikes, the US has not disclosed their identities or any of the alleged evidence linking them to criminal activity. During his trip to Ecuador, Rubio said the decision on what approach to take was “a strike-by-strike or operation-by-operation determination” that depended on the threat and location of the boat, but that the US would “still blow up ships if need be”. Human rights organisations have described the airstrikes as extrajudicial killings, and a special rapporteur for the UN human rights council has concluded that there are “reasonable grounds to believe” that they constitute “crimes against humanity”. Despite Trump’s claims, available data show they have had no impact on the volume of cocaine entering the country. Journalists and human rights groups have managed to identify some of the victims, who in many cases were innocent or, when suspected of involvement in criminal activity, poor people at the bottom of trafficking networks. In Ecuador, the local NGO Permanent Committee for the Defence of Human Rights estimates that more than 220 fishers have been subjected to “violent boardings, arbitrary detentions, enforced disappearances, torture and the destruction of vessels” in this year’s US operations. None of the fishers remains in custody and, while some are still facing prosecution, many have already been acquitted for lack of evidence. “Fishers are losing their livelihoods when the US destroys the boats. Besides, if the US says the vessels were being used to refuel drug boats, why destroy the evidence?” said the committee’s lawyer, Fernando Bastías. A US Southern Command spokesperson said it conducts operations “in compliance with US and international law” and that leaving boats “intact could permit their reuse by criminal networks”. Although the US and Ecuador have celebrated the recent operations on social media, three cases from earlier this year remain unclaimed. The first was on 20 January, when the fishing vessel Fiorella disappeared with eight crew members on board; days earlier, some of them had told relatives they were being monitored by drones and by a vessel on which they said they had seen a US flag. Human rights organisations and journalists identified two more cases with similar patterns in late March, although the fishers survived. The Washington Post reported that the three cases were part of a covert CIA programme, and the agency declined to comment. A US Southern Command spokesperson said it had no knowledge of, nor were its forces “involved in the incidents described in reports involving the Fiorella”. Both the husband and brother of María Mero, 43, were aboard the Fiorella: Gabriel Aladino Mero Delgado, 44, and Jefferson Ariel Mero Cueva, 25. “Where did they take them? Do they have them in the US, in a prison somewhere? We don’t want any trouble; we just want them to send them back to us,” she told the Guardian. The families say they have spent months trying to get answers from the Ecuadorian government, so far without success. “They were fishers, not criminals. Let the great president come here to my house and see whether I have luxuries, anything that would show I’m a drug trafficker. No, because all of us here are poor, and we just want our loved ones back,” added Mero.

Pope Leo celebrates open-air mass before 700,000 people in Paris

Hundreds of thousands of people lined the Avenue des Champs-Élysées in ⁠Paris on Saturday to attend an open-air mass with Pope Leo, on the second day of his visit to France. The Vatican estimated 700,000 people turned out for the outdoor mass with the 71-year-old American pope – about 100,000 more than the number of people who had registered to attend. It took place at the Place de la Concorde, the site of bloody executions by guillotine during the French Revolution – when Louis XVI’s staunchly Catholic rule was overthrown – and now the centre of the secular republic. The choice of the site, a symbol of the French republic to many, was criticised by supporters of France’s strict legislation separating church and state in public life. But cheers rang out in the crowd as the pope thanked ‌God in his homily for the chance to ‌visit France on a whirlwind four-day, three-city tour to promote Catholicism and its teachings. It is the first official papal visit to France in 18 years. Pope Leo asked those in the crowd not to keep their faith to themselves. “Let it overflow, so that those you meet may be refreshed and their thirst satisfied,” he said. “From this beautiful city of Paris, I pray fervently that the living water of the Holy Spirit may flow throughout France.” He told Catholics that only their faith, and not material things, can provide true happiness. “Only God can fill the emptiness within us,” he said. The security zone for the event – the biggest of the papal tour – stretched about 1.4 miles (2.2km), shutting down road traffic in central Paris from the Place de la Concorde to the Arc de Triomphe and beyond. Chanting “Leo, Leo” and “Long live the pope”, crowds of people waved French and Vatican flags as the pontiff rode slowly down the grand boulevard of the Champs-Élysées aboard a popemobile – a specially designed, partly open vehicle used during public appearances. He stopped frequently along the way as babies were lifted out of the crowd and brought to him to receive a papal caress on their heads. The city centre was sealed off for the service, with helicopters circling overhead and snipers positioned on rooftops. About 14,500 police officers, gendarmes, military personnel and firefighters were deployed to the event, which was attended by 2,400 priests and deacons, and about 100 bishops. Marie-Élisabeth, a 44-year-old nun from Burgundy, told a reporter for France 24: “This event is a way for us to say loud and proud that Christians are here.” Speaking to reporters from Agence France-Presse, Sylvie Leclerc, a 51-year-old teacher, also said she and her fellow Christians want to share their fervour for their faith. “You don’t hear much from us Catholics, but now we’re going to make some noise!” she said. “But to proclaim love, peace, joy.”

Trump rejects Iran’s seven-day peace deal to reopen strait of Hormuz

US president Donald Trump has said he has rejected an Iranian proposal to reopen the strait of Hormuz within a week and resume nuclear talks in return for the lifting of the US naval blockade of Iranian ports. “They made a proposal but I reject it,” he told reporters at the White House. The US president was earlier said to be privately sceptical Iran would meet his demands to dismantle its nuclear programme, according to unnamed US officials cited by the Wall Street Journal. Trump has told aides he expects to resume bombing Iran after the November midterms in the US, the newspaper reported. Meanwhile, on Friday evening, he published a post on his Truth Social platform with a graphic showing a map with the strait of Hormuz renamed as the “Trump Strait”. During a three-hour meeting at the UN general assembly in New York earlier this week, Iran had proposed reopening the strait, which would have relieved pressure on global energy markets, and restarting talks on its nuclear programme within seven days. In return, as well as lifting its naval blockade, Iran wants the US to permit the release of some of Iran’s frozen assets, restore the waiver that lifted sanctions on Iran’s oil exports and observe a “ceasefire on all fronts”. That would involve the US president convincing Israel to end its attacks on Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon, a tall order, and allowing the strait to reopen largely on Iran’s terms, with the new route predominantly going through Iranian waters. Saudi Arabia is also said to be concerned that the route deal is bilateral between Iran and Oman, and not with the Gulf states as joint signatories. Reports of the rejection came as Iranian state media reported on Saturday morning that the Iranian president, Masoud Pezeshkian, was on his way back to Tehran from New York. After a meeting with UN secretary general, António Guterres, Pezeshkian said: “Iran has not walked away from the negotiating table, but given past experiences, it no longer trusts the United States.” Earlier, a US official had ⁠said discussions with Iran through mediators were “positive and constructive” and, on Friday, the Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, had detailed the proposal to reporters outside the UN security council. He said the seven-day timeline to open the strait and resume talks could start as soon as the US accepts Iran’s proposal. The initial steps would take about four to five days to complete, the strait would be opened on the sixth day and talks on the nuclear programme would start on the seventh day, he said. This would include a protocol to allow UN nuclear inspectors back in to look at Iran’s damaged sites and the stockpile of highly enriched uranium. “If there is seriousness on the US side to ⁠come to a deal and reopen the strait of Hormuz, everything is now prepared,” Araghchi said. “Iran has conveyed to the United States, through Qatar [mediators], a concrete seven-day plan. If the necessary conditions are met, the strait can be reopened, and normal maritime passage restored within seven days. “The choice now rests with the United States. Iran does not accept coercion, threats or intimidation, and Iran will not surrender its sovereign rights under pressure.” The US naval blockade is putting intense pressure on the Iranian economy, while the seven-month-old conflict in the region has disrupted oil flows through one of the world’s most critical shipping lanes and is increasing the cost of living around the globe. Pezeshkian, in an interview with the CBS show Face the Nation, said Tehran was ready for talks on its nuclear programme and other issues, but would not accept “bullying or coercion”. “Iran is not seeking war, but will defend itself against pressure, threats and attacks,” Pezeshkian said, adding that it had already agreed that “we’re not supposed to develop nuclear weapons”. Previous attempts at diplomacy have failed ‌to end the war, which began on 28 February with US and Israeli attacks. Since then the conflict has alternated between pauses and renewed strikes, killing thousands while degrading Iran’s conventional forces and damaging its already ailing economy. Iran and its allies have retaliated by extending the conflict throughout the region. Iran has struck US allies in the Gulf with drones and missiles while its Houthi allies in Yemen have targeted Saudi interests. Iranian-aligned militias in Iraq were blamed for a pipeline attack that temporarily took more Saudi oil off the market. The violence in Yemen has prompted a new humanitarian crisis, the UN children’s agency said on Friday, reporting a rise in acute malnutrition among children. Trump has previously said he was in no rush to reach a deal, even as high oil prices fuel inflation. On the Iranian side, there are questions as to whether the hardliners who dominate the security forces would accept compromises championed by moderates such as Pezeshkian. Diplomatic efforts surrounding the UN general assembly underscored the global stakes in the conflict. Trump on Saturday also discussed Cuba, whose delegation walked out of the assembly when the US president called the country a “failed state” while predicting the collapse of its communist regime. Though Trump has purported the country to be a threat to US national security, on Saturday he told reporters that he anticipated that “Cuba and us will make a deal”, adding that he doesn’t think taking military action against it will be ‌necessary. Marina Dunbar contributed. With Reuters and AP

Broken promises, confiscated land: the hyperscale AI datacentre being built in a tiny Indian village

When the government officials arrived in Tarluvada last year, they came with abundant promises. Google, one of the world’s richest and most powerful tech companies, would soon be bringing a “golden opportunity” to this tiny village in south India: a $15bn AI datacentre. The project, being built in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, is set to be Google’s largest “hyperscale” AI datacentre outside the US and would, officials said, make the village of Tarluvada into a world-famous tech hub. Jobs, usually scarce in this impoverished community, would become bountiful, real estate prices would soar and compensation for any land would be generous. Few in the village – which sits on a dusty unpaved road and is surrounded by farms and forest – had even heard of AI or knew what a datacentre was. Yet it did not take long for local jubilation over Google’s arrival to turn to suspicion. Just as protests have erupted globally over AI datacentres – from California and Texas to Scotland and Australia – communities in Andhra Pradesh, too have been gathering in opposition to the project, fearing that the people will end up bearing a crippling environmental and economic cost. “We have learned that America does not want the problems of datacentres and so now Google is bringing them here,” said Tarluvada’s village head, BRB Naidu, who admitted he was torn about whether the datacentre would bring prosperity or ruin to their community. “Many in the village are very worried. But the government has refused to answer our questions.” Pointing up to the nearby hillside – where bulldozers recently stripped the land bare of trees to ready it for Google’s mega AI campus – Naidu adds: “The work just continues every day.” The state government, which is allied with Indian prime minister Narendra Modi’s party, have been accused of trying to obfuscate the true scale of the vast AI hub being built in Andhra Pradesh, to push the project through at lightening speed and avoid more stringent environmental scrutiny. Google has partnered with the Adani Group, one of India’s largest and most politically powerful conglomerates with a reputation for getting approvals through quickly, to build the project. Publicly it was announced as a 1GW project – already a larger energy requirement than most AI datacentres. In its response to the Guardian, Google referred to it only as an unspecific “gigawatt scale AI hub”, that was “comparable to other projects”. But state environmental clearances reveal that permission has been granted for it to be more than double that size – 2.51GW; the power equivalent of two large nuclear reactors at full output. Over a year, it amounts to upwards of 30% of the current energy consumption of the whole of Andhra Pradesh, a state home to more than 55 million people. Activists fear that meeting the datacentre’s vast energy demands will lead to seismic environmental consequences for the region, including driving up fossil fuel emissions. While Google has pledged to help generate “new, clean energy” to power its AI hub, currently 75% of the country’s electricity grid is run on coal. The state government argues AI datacentres will be essential to India’s growth and long-term digital competitiveness. According to the government of India’s Economic Survey 2025–26, India generated nearly 20% of the world’s data but hosts only about 3% of global datacentres. But locals and activists say that building one of the world’s largest AI datacentres in a region of India already struggling with issues over extreme heat, water, land, forests, power shortages and environmental regulation comes at a heavy cost. Google’s project will in fact encompass three separate datacentres around the state capital of Vizakhapatnam. One other site nearby to Taluvada is a few metres from reserve forest, a drinking water reservoir and a wildlife sanctuary home to endangered species such as leopards. Despite the AI datacentre’s expansive footprint, the state government issued environmental clearances to Google in just nine days, with no public consultation. Three petitions challenging the state’s quick approval of the project have now been filed to India’s National Green Tribunal (NGT), the country’s top environmental court. The petitions allege that government’s assessment of the risks to the environment and water supplies were “grossly inadequate, scientifically unrealistic, and misleading”. A public litigation has also been filed in the Andhra Pradesh high court. “This datacentre will be unprecedented in scale but there was no public hearing and no substantial evaluation of the ecological damage or the economic cost for local communities,” said VS Krishna, an activist with Human Rights Forum, the organisation which filed the NGT cases. Krishna alleged that their campaign to protest against the datacentre had been met with a deliberate silencing, including videos and social media pages being taken down. The government did not respond to this allegation. “We just have to look at the protests happening across the world to understand how environmentally catastrophic this will be,” Krishna added. In Tarluvada, temperatures regularly soar to about 45C during the summer and there are concerns the datacentres – documented emitters of heat – could make this even worse. The mass deforestation required for the project – more than 100 acres, could drive up temperatures even more. In response to the Guardian, Google said the project would have “no expected impact” on the local community. The strain on water supplies in this already water-stressed area has also been a cause of concern. In similarly water-stressed cities in the US, datacentres have been accused of exacerbating drought while polluting the water supply. Google said this project would use air-cooling instead of water, and would therefore have no impact on local drinking water supplies. Venkat Surynarayana, 40, a farmer in Tarluvada, said that when officials had initially come to measure land for the datacentre “they never mentioned anything about risks of pollution or water or heat, they didn’t even tell us what the project was. “We are sick with worry since we learned about the problems a datacentre can bring. This area can not afford to be any hotter. What if this makes our land dry and worthless? What will happen to my crops and my livelihood?” Surynarayana claimed attempts to get answers from the local administration had been met with police threats and protesters such as himself had been routinely detained. “When we raised our voices, they ignore us and then they shut us down,” he said. “But if this is not stopped, it could be the end of Tarluvada.” For the state government of Andhra Pradesh, the deal struck with Google to build this vast datacentre on its turf is a source of enormous pride, part of a wider policy to make the state into India’s most advanced and affluent tech hub. “Artificial intelligence is becoming foundational infrastructure for the global economy,” said Sribharat Mathukumilli, a local MP with the ruling state government, who rejected the environmental concerns. The subsidies and incentives they offered to Google, from decades-long tax breaks and discounted land to access to cheap electricity and water, are estimated to amount to 220bn rupees ($2.2bn) over 20 years. “Our objective is not simply to host a datacentre, but to create an AI and digital ecosystem,” said Mathukumilli. Late last year, the state granted permission for another 1GW AI datacentre, to be built by Indian conglomerate Reliance Industries. Google insisted the design choices of its AI datacentre have been tailored to local conditions and that it had “engaged deeply” with local communities, claiming it would generate thousands of jobs around Vizakhapatnam. But swathes of villagers in Tarluvada allege they were forced to give up land for the project against their will, and say they have not been given all they were promised in return. “No one will tell us the truth about this project,” said T Applaraju, 40, who was one of the 520 local families in Tarluvada who recently had land taken back that the government had allocated to him 20 years ago. He claims he was given no notice that his land was to be taken until April this year, when security guards working for the Adani Group erected fences and blocked locals from entering the plots they had farmed for years. “They took land that we thought belonged to us, it’s a big shock,” he said. “Why are Google building this here and not in America?” The state government claims no lands were forcibly taken and that it gave “generous compensation” to those who were eligible. The Adani group says that all necessary legal approvals were given. But many of the 47 farmers from the impoverished Dalit community who were compensated for their land are also unhappy. One farmer, P Venkat Rao, alleged he was pressured by the government into giving up his only acre of land against his will. He received $40,000 in compensation, but said the government’s promise to give them a replacement piece of land and one job per family had not materialised. Without land to farm, Rao described the compensation as “worthless”. “I am a farmer, without my land I am nothing,” he added. “They have taken my livelihood and broken their promises.”

Kyiv has become a frontline city - and winter is on the way

It felt like the last day of summer. On a Sunday afternoon in late September, people in Kyiv strolled through the city’s botanical gardens, admiring the late-flowering dahlias. Later, the terraces in the Podil area – a neighbourhood full of bars, patisseries and bookshops – filled up with customers in search of a cocktail. The idyll was an illusion. As the day darkened, the air defence began its rumble and boom. When a projectile fell with an explosive smack on a bar table, the drinkers flinched and then laughed. It was only a conker from the chestnut tree overhead. Nursing a glass of rosé, writer Myroslav Laiuk talked about the picnic he and his wife had had the previous evening, in a park in the Obolon district – prosecco in proper glasses, cheese and charcuterie. Then a drone was shot down above their heads. Very pretty, he said, with a smile. Shooting stars. Time to make a wish. Kyiv is no longer the city it was in the summer. Since late August, the Russians have been attacking over and over again in daylight hours, rather than only at night. The crump of air-defence, whine of drones and thunder of explosions are no longer the grim music of the night, but a commonplace waking-hours symphony, disrupting schools and workplaces and threatening life. Warehouses and city petrol stations have been targeted, and at times acrid smoke blurs the clear autumn mornings. Kyiv has become a frontline city. And winter is on the way. Winter is something to dread in Kyiv. Last year the cold was terrible – temperatures into the minus 20s – and cruelly long-lasting, persisting well into February. Illustrator Sergiy Maidukov was one of many who lost heating in his flat after the Russians attacked power infrastructure, the invaders’ aim seemingly to make the capital unliveable. The indoor temperature dropped to 3C. He kept warm by layering up, but also by going for runs. “At least for 10 minutes afterwards you felt a like normal person, and you could just wear a T-shirt”, he said. He had a steady gas supply, so he could heat up water in a saucepan for a basic wash afterwards. At intervals he’d get up from his work and dance or do push-ups – not an option for the infirm. As film-maker Iryna Tsilyk put it: “Young and strong people – they will survive every time. But how about all those invisible people that we usually don’t meet?” Tsilyk’s biggest fear was, she said, the loss of internet connectivity. Lack of water supply would be another nightmare. Maria Shuvalova, an editor in academic publishing, described the period two winters ago when, for several days, the water supply failed both in her flat and in her coworking space. She was drinking tea to keep warm while working, then needing the loo. So she would walk the 20 minutes home, pee in a bottle, then return to the coworking space; then drink more tea, and repeat the whole cycle. For bowel movements, there was a plastic bag, knotted and disposed of in the trash. Such details of life were, she joked, “shit you definitely don’t want to know”. On a stroll in the botanical gardens, Iryna Gorlach, an international cooperation expert, laughed when asked how she was preparing for the coming cold. She pulled out her phone and showed an Instagram post from a popular Kyiv account. “This winter will be super difficult, we need to prepare properly,” it said. Then three bullet points: “Buy a house in a village; go abroad; stock up on grains and cereals.” Beneath, were the words, “How I’m preparing” and a cartoon image of a panicked-looking dog holding a cross and a copy of the Bible. Leaving the city is certainly on many people’s minds – if only for a few weeks ata time if things get bad. Nastya Dyakova, chief executive of an online safety charity, has rented a seven-bedroom house in the Carpathian mountains, in far western Ukraine, where staff and their families will be able to stay rent free if the situation in Kyiv becomes practically or psychologically untenable. “It is not only a question about winter in Kyiv, but about drones,” she said. Since August, the capital has been assailed by new, faster, jet-powered, harder-to-intercept drones. “It’s become really emotionally challenging to stay in Kyiv, and we understood that it’s difficult for our team to work or to focus because they really worry about their safety. So this option in the Carpathians is available for the next six months, until the end of winter.” The Lukyanivka neighbourhood of central Kyiv has been particularly hard hit this year, with its huge shopping complex and market bombed out and burned in the early summer. Market traders have set up their stalls beside the ruins anyway: one lady, cheerfully presiding over slabs of salo, pork lard, proclaimed that her personal coping mechanism was going to be a plentiful supply of home distilled hooch or horilka. Another stallholder, Halyna, cheerfully selling bouquets of lavender, dahlias and chrysanthemums, was similarly fatalistic. “It will be whatever God sends us,” she said. Passing the market en route to work was Viktoriia Riabchenko, an accountant. There had been a particularly good harvest this year in her dacha garden, she said, and she had a great stock of ferments: plums, sour cherries, raspberries, tomatoes, cucumbers and sweet peppers. Not that she was especially concerned about the possibility of food shortages if warehouse bombing continued, she said; Russian propaganda exaggerated the potential problem, and specific shortfalls in shops tended to be remedied fast. Attitudes to winter, of course, depend on one’s perspective and experience. Viktor, a delivery driver was pausing outside Lukyankivka’s branch of MacDonald’s. The plastic golden arches on the side of the building have lately been restored to crispness after the heat from the summer’s bombs and fires slid them into a Dali-like melt. He was used to the cold, outdoors all day on his moped, and, having moved from Kramatorsk in the Donetsk region, had plenty of experience with bangs and explosions. Ivan Onyshchenko, who had dropped by for a hamburger and fries from his nearby workplace, had invested in a generator that he put on his balcony on the fifth floor – a lot of fuel to carry upstairs if the electricity stayed out. Usually generators chug away at high volume; his, he promised, was “only as loud as a hairdryer”. Shuvalova lives on the 14th floor of her apartment building, and joked that last year she got great thighs walking up the stairs during power outages. This year will be different though: she and her husband, who is serving in the army, are expecting a baby, and preparing for the winter has been detailed and intense. The couple have plans A, B and C – plan A is to stay in Kyiv, but leaving to stay with friends or family further from the Russian missiles is on the table. Realising they could not expect the baby to live “like moles” as they did last year – reading by candlelight and working by laptop-screen glow during days-long outages – they have invested in an energy-storage system. The unit is in effect a giant battery, about the size of a small carry-on suitcase, that can keep appliances going for a day or so, if need be. Last winter they were on sale for 160,000 UAH (about £2, 700). Cannily, the couple bought one for about half that during the summer. Shuvalova also opened a drawer to reveal an array of small power banks. The residents of their apartment block are voting on taking over the running of their own building. If they manage it, they will install a generator to power one of the lifts during power cuts, and a toilet for the bomb shelter – AKA the underground car park. Shuvalova opened cupboards to reveal stashes of water, dried grains, rice, and tinned meat. They have a camping stove and a box full of “dry shower” packs – wipes that, with 50ml of water added, can be used to wash. In her anti-natal classes, a lot of emphasis is put on breastfeeding, she said. Formula requires clean water and the ability to heat it – not to be taken for granted this winter. “Breastfeeding takes care of all that,” she said. The air-defence roared away as she spoke. People outside Ukraine may question the decision to have a baby in Kyiv under such circumstances. “We couldn’t postpone any more so we just have to adapt,” said Shuvalova. “It’s bringing a lot of meaning to our life, and joy. And pregnancy hormones are very nice. I’m so calm and not stressing at all.” Whether fatalistic, downhearted, or meticulously prepared, the boundaries of “acceptable” or “ordinary” have been pushed outwards for Kyivans in ways unimaginable to the inhabitants of other European capitals. Only one thing is absolutely certain this unpredictable, dreaded coming winter: that it will end. According to Maidukov, the illustrator, “In the evening when you are already blue and trembling, you’re thinking, ‘OK, one day is behind me, and I need to bear maybe two or three more weeks of this, which is not such a long time’.” Last winter’s freeze, he said, was a “weird period. Each day I was on the edge, about to fall down with my morale, but I didn’t allow myself to. Because nothing will stop spring. Spring will definitely come.”

Russia strikes at heart of Ukraine’s digital economy with attacks on ISPs and datacentres

Russia has opened a new front in its campaign against Ukraine, hitting several datacentres and internet providers in Kyiv this week in an apparent attempt to weaken the digital backbone of the economy. About 100,000 households in Kyiv and the surrounding region suffered temporary internet outages after strikes on Wednesday and Thursday, according to Ukraine’s digital transformation ministry. On Friday, another drone strike in central Kyiv hit the offices of Datagroup, one of Ukraine’s largest telecommunications companies, killing four people. “Russia has targeted major Ukrainian datacentres, seeking to disrupt the flow of information,” Ukraine’s foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, wrote on X. On Thursday, Polish authorities reported a Starlink satellite station in central Poland serving Ukraine had been set on fire, in what appeared to be part of a coordinated attack on Ukraine’s internet infrastructure. Local officials described it as an “act of sabotage” linked to Moscow. Russia has previously targeted Ukraine’s datacentres, but attacks on this scale are new. Keeping the country connected has been a priority for the Ukrainian government throughout the war, with authorities looking for ways to ensure mobile and internet providers have enough backup power to keep operating during prolonged electricity outages. Ukraine’s relatively decentralised internet network also makes it harder for individual strikes to cause widespread or prolonged outages across whole cities or regions. But with winter approaching, officials and industry figures fear repeated Russian attacks could begin to disrupt the networks that keep Ukraine’s banks, payment systems and public services running. “I recommend Kyiv residents gradually prepare for winter … by getting Starlink terminals or other means of maintaining communications,” Serhii Sternenko, a popular blogger and former government adviser, wrote on X. “The goal of the Russians is not only to strike at the capital’s energy infrastructure but also to destroy all datacentres and internet operators,” Sternenko added. The attacks come amid Russia’s intensified strikes on Ukraine’s economy, with missiles and new jet-powered drones used against warehouses, petrol stations, ports and other commercial infrastructure, adding further pressure to an economy already strained by nearly five years of full-scale war. Among the targets on Friday was a warehouse used by the McDonald’s fast food restaurant chain outside Kyiv. Heavy industry has also been hit hard, with Russian strikes disrupting industrial facilities and steel production. This month, Ukraine failed to produce a single tonne of steel for the first time in a century, according to a senior industry official. Ukraine is struggling to counter a growing wave of new high-speed Russian jet-powered drones, including the Geran-5, while also running critically low on Patriot missiles needed to defend against Russian ballistic and cruise missile attacks. Speaking to reporters on Friday, the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said Donald Trump had approved granting Ukraine licences to produce Patriot air defence missiles, potentially giving Kyiv a path to manufacture the crucial systems domestically, though experts say it could take years to establish production. Trump has previously flip-flopped over whether to allow Ukraine to produce Patriots, with the US also facing pressure on its own stocks because of the war in the Middle East.