Odesa Under Fire: Infrastructure, Intimidation and the Human Cost of Russia’s Winter War

Tuesday 10 February 2026

The recent Russian attacks on Odesa form part of a grim and increasingly familiar pattern. As winter tightens its grip on southern Ukraine, Russia has once again intensified its campaign against civilian infrastructure — energy networks, residential buildings, transport links and public institutions — with the deliberate effect of amplifying human suffering at a time of maximum vulnerability. The explosions that have torn through Odesa’s neighbourhoods in recent weeks are not merely tactical military events; they are acts designed to unmake the ordinary conditions of urban life.

In successive waves of drone and missile strikes, electricity substations have been damaged, gas lines ruptured and water pumping stations rendered inoperable. The cumulative effect has been repeated blackouts across large parts of the city, sometimes lasting days. Heating systems — essential in sub-zero temperatures — have failed, forcing residents to improvise with portable stoves, candles and communal warming points. Public transport has been intermittently suspended, and emergency services have struggled to move through streets blocked by debris and ice.

Schools and kindergartens have not been spared. Several educational buildings have sustained blast damage, windows shattered and roofs partially collapsed. Classes continue where possible, often in darkened rooms with plastic sheeting stretched across broken frames. The message conveyed is unmistakable — no civilian space is considered beyond reach.

Voices from a City Under Attack

Behind the abstractions of infrastructure damage lies a quieter, more intimate suffering. Olena, a nurse living in the Moldavanka district, describes the moment her apartment block lost power during a night-time strike. “The lights went out and then there was silence,” she says. “No lifts, no heating, no phone signal. My mother is seventy-eight — she sat in her coat all night because the apartment went cold within hours.” For Olena, the fear is no longer the explosion itself but the long hours afterwards — the uncertainty, the waiting, the sense of being cut off.

Serhii, a dock worker whose job depends on Odesa’s port infrastructure, speaks of the erosion of normality. “You wake up and you do not know if there will be water, or whether your children will be able to go to school”, he explains. “You plan your day around electricity. You charge everything whenever you can. Life becomes small and fragile.” The port — once a symbol of Odesa’s outward-looking identity — now operates under constant threat, its economic rhythms repeatedly disrupted by air-raid alerts.

For parents the psychological toll on children is amongst the most painful of consequences. Air-raid sirens have become part of the city’s soundscape, shaping childhood memory in ways that will not easily fade. Teachers report increased anxiety, difficulty concentrating and behavioural regression among younger pupils. The war is not only destroying buildings; it is re-engineering the inner lives of a generation.

Winter as a Weapon

The timing of these attacks is not incidental. Russia’s winter strategy has increasingly focused on exploiting seasonal hardship — using cold, darkness and isolation as force multipliers. By striking energy and municipal infrastructure during the winter months, Russia seeks to transform weather into an ally, magnifying the humanitarian impact of each successful hit.

This approach reflects lessons drawn from earlier phases of the war. Large-scale missile barrages in previous winters demonstrated that even partial disruption of power grids could produce cascading failures — water shortages, heating collapse, communication blackouts — far beyond the immediate blast radius. In the winter of 2025–26 Russia has refined this method, relying more heavily on drones and mixed-strike packages to exhaust Ukrainian air defences and force difficult allocation choices.

Odesa occupies a particular place within this strategy. As a major port city, she represents both an economic artery and a symbolic target. Damage to her infrastructure disrupts trade, strains export routes and reinforces Russia’s wider effort to weaken Ukraine’s economic resilience. At the same time attacks on a culturally cosmopolitan city far from the front lines serve a psychological purpose — reminding civilians across Ukraine that geography offers no immunity.

Legal and Moral Consequences

International observers have repeatedly condemned these attacks. Officials from the United Nations and the Council of Europe have emphasised that systematic strikes on civilian infrastructure violate the principles of distinction and proportionality embedded in international humanitarian law. The deliberate targeting of energy systems during winter, they argue, amounts to collective punishment of the civilian population.

Yet condemnation alone offers little immediate relief to those enduring the cold and darkness. Ukrainian authorities, supported by volunteer networks and international partners, have raced to restore services, erect temporary shelters and distribute generators. Each repair, however, remains provisional — vulnerable to the next strike.

Endurance Without Illusion

Odesa’s response has been characterised by endurance rather than illusion. There is no romanticism in the city’s resilience, no pretence that adaptation is painless. People endure because they must — because leaving is not always possible and surrender is unthinkable. Cafés reopen when power returns; neighbours share extension cables; strangers check on the elderly in stairwells lit by mobile phone screens.

The Russian campaign against Odesa seeks to reduce the city to a place of exhaustion and despair. It has not succeeded. What it has achieved is the deepening of a collective understanding — that this war is not only fought on front lines and in negotiating rooms, but in kitchens without heat, classrooms without light and nights interrupted by sirens. Odesa remains wounded, but she remains unbroken — a city holding together not because suffering has been avoided, but because it has been endured together.