Stay or leave? Ukrainians face a hard choice ahead of what could be the war’s toughest winter

KYIV: Matvii Yermolenko is 2, but he already knows the words for siren and air defense. This winter, his mother decided to take him out of Kyiv.

“There is sadness, but even stronger is the understanding of what I have to do — leave,” Matvii’s mother, Kateryna Tsvihun, said, adding that they will come back in spring. “I cannot live without Kyiv and Ukraine. I am rooted here, my child is Ukrainian, and my husband is fighting for this.”

Ukrainians are bracing for what many expect to be the hardest winter of the war. Last year, heating disruptions left thousands of people in freezing apartments in Kyiv. Now, officials and analysts say, the badly damaged energy system is increasingly struggling to withstand attacks, putting the country’s resilience to another test.