Nikolai Karpitsky. Winter in Sloviansk: The Goal Is to Survive Together with Ukraine

Source: PostPravda.info 11.0.2026.
URL: https://postpravda.info/en/stories/frontline-stories/winter-in-sloviansk/

“This is the hardest winter in Sloviansk in all the years of the war,” says Nikolai Karpitsky. He has spent all four years of the war in this frontline city. Specially for PostPravda.Info, he tells how a resident of Sloviansk endures the cold, which the enemy uses as a weapon.

Winter in Sloviansk: Cold as a Weapon

Russia uses not only bombs and drones against Ukrainian civilians, but also cold. Objectively, shelling is more dangerous than cold, yet psychologically cold is harder to endure. You eventually get used to the danger of dying at any moment: at first, when explosions go off nearby, it is deeply unsettling, but later you stop reacting. Cold, however, is something you can never get used to.

I live close to the front line, and here cold is compounded by another factor that breaks people — uncertainty. Everyone experiences it differently; I can only speak from my own experience.

January was bitterly cold. As the frost set in, Russia began deliberately striking Ukraine’s energy system, trying to freeze the country. The main blow fell on Kyiv. People in high-rise apartment buildings without electricity find themselves trapped: there is no light, no water, it is impossible to use the toilet properly, and the building gradually freezes through. Where utility services relied on luck and did not drain the water from the radiators, pipes burst.

While the enemy’s attention was focused on the capital, things were easier in Sloviansk, where I live — power outages were rare and short-lived. If electricity had been cut the way it was in Kyiv, my house would not have survived.

Typical private houses in Ukraine are not designed for severe cold, and when they were built, no one imagined the possibility of war. I live in one such house myself. The kitchen is in an extension, separate from the main building; the gas boiler that supplies heat to the house is located there as well, with a pipe connecting the two structures. If the electric motor stops, the water will stop circulating, and the house will freeze very quickly.

At the end of January there was a thaw, but at the market people anxiously discussed the abnormal February frosts expected the following week. And then Trump said he had asked Putin to suspend strikes on energy infrastructure for a week because it was very cold. It sounded like fantasy, but one desperately wanted to believe it — there was no “Plan B” for a prolonged power outage.

Putin waited for the peak of the frost, and on February 3 the Russian army struck with everything it had managed to accumulate during the days of the “truce”: according to Zelensky, 32 ballistic missiles, 11 other missiles, 28 cruise missiles, and 450 attack drones. Trump confirmed that Putin had kept his promise — because, as he put it, that was exactly what the agreement had been.

Without Heating at Minus Fifteen

The twenty-four hours from February 3 to 4 were the hardest for me in the entire war. At the same time, they reflected — like a mirror — my perception of the war over all four years. The electricity went out during the day, as suddenly as the invasion began on February 24, 2022. On the one hand, you understand that this can happen; on the other, it is psychologically impossible to imagine it as reality. And when it does happen, you find yourself in a completely different reality for which you are unprepared — whether it is war or a power outage at –15°C.

The first reaction is hope that it won’t last long. The house is still holding heat; the soup has been cooked. The same hope existed in the first days of the invasion: we just need to hold out for three days… ten days… and then a miracle will happen — Western aid, a counteroffensive, Russia will retreat. But the war goes on, and resources are gradually depleted.

Night falls, there is still no electricity, and it becomes clear that something serious has happened. The most tormenting thing is uncertainty. I live on the outskirts of the city and find myself in complete informational isolation. I don’t know whether this is a local accident or a global one. Perhaps the electricity will come back in the next second — or perhaps never. I had the same feeling during our counteroffensive in the autumn of 2022: you hope the war will end with a quick victory, but it is just as likely to drag on indefinitely.

You want to fall asleep and wake up when the lights are back on. I fell asleep and woke up many times, and each time it grew colder. I had to take another blanket and two throws. In the morning, I put on a fifth sweater and a jacket and walk around the house to warm up. The frost will last a few more days — it’s impossible to hold out without electricity until the thaw. This is what a war of attrition looks like: who will run out first — the aggressor or us? Russia has incomparably greater resources and a constant influx of volunteers ready to kill us for money.

I left the refrigerator door wide open — let the cold in the house be of at least some use. I heat the soup over a candle. The pot gives off heat to the room almost as quickly as it receives it, but after two hours the soup is warm at last. While I pace back and forth around the room, the cold is still bearable, but with each hour it gets worse. If the temperature in the house drops below freezing, the radiators will burst, and then it will make no difference whether you are inside the house or outside.

There has been no electricity for almost a day, and the uncertainty presses harder and harder. Perhaps the pipe outside has already frozen through… My mind is torn between the hope that a light bulb will come on any second and my imagination drawing an apocalyptic picture of war in which there is no longer any hope of survival. Now the main task is not so much to wait for the electricity as to preserve inner calm. To do that, I detach myself from the expectation of the “next moment” and focus on what is “here and now.”

Hatred creeps up toward everyone who supported Putin, especially toward my Russian acquaintances. If I let hatred inside me, I will simply dissolve in it. To distance myself from hatred, I look for support within myself, in the moment of the “here and now.” No matter how terrifying life may be, each concrete moment of life has value in itself, and I strive to live it fully — even if in the next moment I might die in my own home from a drone or a bomb. Along with hatred, I let go of expectations and of the picture of reality that my imagination draws.

Why is it impossible to get used to the cold? I can, by inertia, go about my daily business while bombs are falling, but to warm up I have to make additional efforts. I walk around the room to keep warm, but how long can I do that — one day, two? Cold cannot be endured by inertia.

By inertia, one can carry on with everyday tasks even in moments of danger, as long as those moments do not require a struggle for survival. This is how habituation to war arises. Analysts and publicists who paint an optimistic picture of future Russian failures and Ukrainian successes contribute to this habituation. In the first year of the war, this supported us and helped mobilize our mental strength. But war has another side as well: sooner or later it reaches everyone, forcing them to fight for their own life. It is impossible to get used to this, just as it is impossible to get used to the cold, because constant effort is required, and human mental resources are limited.

Goal-Setting: To Survive Together with Ukraine

What does it mean to live in the moment of the “here and now”? If you perceive this moment from within the flow of emotional experiences, no amount of strength will be enough to endure what every single moment of war brings. One can live it fully only by relying on goal-setting that depends neither on emotional states nor on external circumstances. Only this reveals awareness of one’s own existence in the moment of the “here and now,” and this existence has intrinsic value. From this follows the volition — to live this moment fully despite the cold, the war, and the danger of dying the next minute. This volition is embodied in the goal-setting of surviving in spite of everything. But not surviving at the expense of others — surviving together with others. In wartime, this means surviving together with Ukraine, regardless of how strong the enemy is.

This goal-setting gives strength and endows life with meaning. Even when there is no electricity or internet, when it is impossible to turn on a laptop and I am forced to walk around the room to keep warm, I can still do something for Ukraine — for example, compose in my head the texts of future publications.

Electricity was restored after a day. The pipes froze, but not completely — the water barely flows through them, so the house does not warm up. It is not yet so hard for me. It is much harder for people with elderly relatives and children trapped in high-rise buildings. More frosts and new power outages lie ahead. The struggle continues.

"Responsibility". War Dictionary by Nikolai Karpitsky

Source: PostPravda.info 05.02.2025
URL: https://postpravda.info/en/stories/dictionary-of-war/personal-and-collective-responsibility/

What is responsibility, and how is a feeling of responsibility connected to recognizing a person as a free citizen rather than a serf or a slave? Why do some Russians acknowledge collective responsibility for the war, while others are outraged that responsibility for crimes of the regime – crimes in which they were not personally involved – is being attributed to them? To answer these questions, Nikolai Karpitsky, in another article of the “Dictionary of War” on PostPravda.Info, explains how personal and collective responsibility manifests itself.

Responsibility

Responsibility is manifested in a readiness to answer for one’s inaction, one’s actions, and their consequences, even if those consequences are shaped by circumstances beyond a person’s control. Guilt is a moral or legal evaluation of a person’s actions, implying moral condemnation or legal punishment. Responsibility, by contrast, is a person’s obligation to determine their attitude toward their past actions or toward circumstances that require certain actions in the future. Thus, guilt is possible only in relation to actions already committed, whereas responsibility can relate not only to the past but also to the future. For example, if an adult encounters a lost child, they become responsible for that child’s immediate future.

Since people tend to evade responsibility for their guilt, society has developed legal mechanisms to compel accountability.

Responsibility for factual guilt in the past is realized in a readiness to answer for the consequences; responsibility for the future is realized in actions; responsibility for others’ crimes, in which a person has become involuntarily implicated by virtue of place of residence or citizenship, is realized in expressing one’s attitude toward these crimes and their consequences. Therefore, ignoring a war of aggression unleashed by one’s own state is a manifestation of irresponsibility, for which a person bears personal guilt.

Only free and legally capable individuals can be aware of responsibility; therefore, to demand responsibility from a person is to recognize them as free and legally capable. Responsibility for the crimes of the state can be recognized only by specific individuals who represent it; if they refuse this responsibility, they lose the right to speak on behalf of the state. The demand that Russians take responsibility for Russia’s war of aggression and war crimes presupposes treating them not as slaves or serfs, but as citizens endowed with agency and free will. Refusal to take responsibility for the crimes of one’s own state means the loss of agency. Since this demand applies to all legally capable citizens of Russia, it presupposes the collective responsibility of Russians for the war.

Collective Responsibility

Collective responsibility for a war of aggression is the obligation to embody one’s attitude toward an aggressive war and its consequences in concrete actions. If personal responsibility is determined by a person’s own actions or by their involvement in the actions of others, then collective responsibility is determined by the situation and circumstances – in particular, whether a person is a citizen of the aggressor state, whether they live on its territory, and so on.

Involvement in the actions of others may be direct – when these are conscious actions aimed at supporting the war – or indirect, when a person goes about their own life, pays taxes, and may even, according to their convictions, oppose the war. However, through his daily activities, he unwittingly supports the state that is waging war. In both cases, responsibility is personal in nature, since it depends on the degree of a particular individual’s involvement in supporting the war. Thus, the degree of involvement of employees of military enterprises differs from that of pensioners, and so forth.

Collective responsibility is determined by circumstances – in this case, by the fact that Russia is waging war in the name of all Russians. Therefore, all Russians, including those who have left Russia and are not involved in the actions of the Russian authorities, nevertheless bear collective responsibility for the actions of the state. This responsibility may have moral, legal, political, and existential dimensions.

Collective moral responsibility obliges each citizen to define their moral attitude toward their own actions or inaction. If a person continues to live as though the war has nothing to do with them, the lived experience of those who have survived the war is devalued in their everyday life, which undermines the very possibility of communication with them. For this reason, many Ukrainians do not wish to communicate with Russians.

Collective political responsibility for the war extends to all citizens of the aggressor state, since they failed to stop their government from unleashing an aggressive war. This responsibility is manifested in consent to political punishment for the war: reparations, restrictions on the right to independently determine the fate of one’s country, partial or complete loss of state sovereignty, up to the dismantling of the state.

Collective legal responsibility for the war does not imply recognition of collective guilt and is manifested in the obligation of any citizen of the aggressor state to give an account of their own actions or inaction during the period of war for the purpose of legal assessment. Only if involvement in war crimes is established – for example, if a person programmed missile launches or conducted propaganda activities among schoolchildren – is the court obliged to determine the degree of their personal guilt and to assign punishment.

Collective existential responsibility for the war arises on the basis of identity and manifests itself in the form of shame for one’s country and community.

The Subjective Experience of Collective Responsibility

For some, collective responsibility evokes a feeling of shame; for others, a feeling of injustice because it extends to them as well. Many in Russia, including among those who support Ukraine, ask the question: “Why should I bear responsibility for the actions of Putin, whom I hate and who has ruined my life?” Some perceive collective responsibility as equating victims and executioners and ask: “Do the victims of Stalin’s Gulag bear the same collective responsibility for the crimes of the USSR as the executioners from the NKVD?”

However, Russia’s war against Ukraine is not being waged by isolated criminals but by the entire state system, which encompasses all citizens, including those who oppose the war. This causes people who do not support the war to feel shame for their country and for the crimes committed in their name. It is precisely this feeling of shame that leads to the awareness of collective responsibility.

Nikolai Karpitsky. The Existential Experience of War

Source: PostPravda.info 19.01.2026.
URL: https://postpravda.info/en/stories/frontline-stories/the-existential-experience-of-war/

Existential experience is everything that shapes one’s attitude toward life, and for many people today war occupies a central place in that experience – especially for those who live in frontline areas. The existential experience of war includes not only what a person observes – bombardments, the collapse of vital infrastructure, destruction, and the loss of life – but also what they experience inwardly. However, inner experience acquires existential value only when hatred is overcome through intention, fear and inaction through action, and a sense of uncertainty and illusory expectations through a vision of the future.

The Existential Experience of War Is Not Mere Knowledge, but Understanding That Changes a Person

In 2022, I decided to remain in Sloviansk. The city was under constant shelling, but the prospect of occupation seemed far more frightening. At that time, I was checking frontline news three times a day: the situation was deteriorating dramatically, and it was unclear whether our city would survive. I could have moved to the rear or gone abroad, but this is my home. There was another reason to stay: only direct proximity to the war could give me genuine understanding, enabling me to write about it. Knowledge and understanding of lived experience are not the same. Knowledge is the possession of information. Genuine understanding – in other words, understanding in the existential sense – is the interpretation of knowledge through one’s own lived experience.

Hatred in the Existential Experience of War

Hatred. You are living your ordinary life – work, everyday concerns, relationships – and suddenly someone, for no reason at all, tries to kill you. An entire state is working toward that goal. You turn to acquaintances and relatives in Russia, but instead of words of support you hear accusations of Nazism and approval of the invasion. After February 24, 2022, many residents of Ukraine lost their homes, their jobs, and their loved ones, and for the fourth year now have been forced to struggle for survival. It is therefore unsurprising that an all-consuming hatred toward everything associated with Russia has arisen among them.

In the first months of the war, this hatred helped Ukrainian society to mobilize, but over time it became increasingly destructive. Hatred cannot be kept inside – it simply burns you from within. A need arises to release it, at least on social media. But posts filled with curses directed at the enemy are not read by the enemy. They are read by friends, to whom this hatred is transmitted.

Thus, passing from person to person, hatred grows like a snowball, while its intended target remains unreachable. Neither Putin nor his inner circle read our posts. As a result, the accumulated aggression begins to shift toward closer targets: first toward corrupt and incompetent bureaucrats, then toward Ukrainian politicians, public and religious figures who remain silent about problems, then toward those who respect them, and ultimately toward everyone who, in one way or another, has failed to meet your expectations. Arguments begin within Ukrainian communities and among pro-Ukrainian activists, and in this squabble the main enemy – Russia – recedes into the background.

Intention. Once you allow hatred inside, it takes complete control of you. That is why I internally distanced myself from this feeling and turned my work on a wartime philosophical diary into a practice of transforming emotions into understanding. Instead of hatred, what took root within me was the intention to fight until the complete victory over the aggressor state and the punishment of all those guilty of war crimes. Hatred is a passion that flares up spontaneously and suppresses human will. Intention is the directedness of one’s own will–it orders feelings and mobilizes strength.

The fourth year of the full-scale war is now underway. The situation at the front continues to deteriorate. Russia is increasing its military potential. Europe increasingly feels the real threat of invasion, especially Poland and the Baltic states. However, the scale of these threats does not affect my intention, because it depends neither on my psychological state nor on external circumstances. Only the form of struggle changes. For me, it is work with words.

Inner Experiences in the Existential Experience of War

Fear. In a frontline city there is no time to hide from shelling – and I have nowhere to hide. So when shelling begins, you simply hope that the next shell, drone, or bomb will not hit you. At first it is terrifying, then you get used to it, and the shelling no longer distracts you from working on texts, even when you hear the roar of an incoming strike that makes the windowpanes rattle. Right now, as I write these words, a powerful explosion has gone off very close by – the house shook, and sirens wailed in the street. The electricity went out for a moment but was immediately restored, and I can continue working.

Fear is experienced differently in the rear than near the front. Sometimes it seems to me that it is even scarier deep in the rear. When death is nearby, fear becomes very concrete: shelling begins – it is frightening; it stops – relaxation comes, as if nothing had happened. A person cannot live in constant tension; the psyche dampens emotions on its own. But the farther you are from the front, the more frightening the future and the uncertainty of the situation become. Fear grows diffuse and turns into a constant background of perception.

Uncertainty. I live on the outskirts of Sloviansk, where phone coverage is poor. Sometimes, after shelling, electricity disappears for a long time, and you don’t know when it will be restored – or whether it will be restored at all. Then you remain in the dark, with a drained laptop, unable to find out what is happening around you. The enemy may already be close – and you would not even know it. Only the cold of winter nights breaks this sensory isolation from the world. The pump that circulates hot water through the radiators cannot operate without electricity. If the temperature drops below zero, the pipes will burst (fortunately, this has not happened yet). It's in moments like this that the sheer horror of a future unknown sinks in – work at the computer had kept those thoughts at bay, until the lights went out.

Analysts’ forecasts rarely come true because it is impossible to calculate all the factors of war. We can only track trends – and right now those trends are very bad. But if the future is not predetermined, it can change despite even the bleakest expectations. There is always room for hope.

Inaction. No matter how exhausting work may be, inaction is far more frightening. In the summer of 2022, Sloviansk emptied out, and many of those who remained lost their usual occupations. You sit at home all day without electricity, with no way to distract yourself, simply watching your city being shelled. At the “Good News” Protestant church, an acquaintance told me: “I try to come here as often as I can because just sitting at home is unbearable.” Fortunately, I did not have this problem, because I was constantly working on texts. I knew I was doing important work and felt that I was taking an active position in life. That is why I reacted calmly to shelling and other difficulties, which become unbearable if you remain in passive contemplation. The most valuable thing in wartime is meaningful work that prevents you from sinking into inaction.

The Perception of the Future in the Existential Experience of War

Illusory expectations. When the front is close, you live one day at a time, without hoping for the future, and then you stop understanding people in the rear who live with illusory expectations. At first, everyone in Ukraine hoped for new weapons that would turn the tide on the front. Later, people counted on Russia running out of soldiers. A year and a half ago, when the Russians began advancing toward Pokrovsk, in Ukraine preferred not to notice it – everyone talked about local successes near Kharkiv and assured each other that the enemy would soon exhaust its offensive capacity.

When I said that there were no signs of exhaustion at all – on the contrary, that Russia’s military power was growing – my interlocutors reacted with extreme irritation, sometimes even aggression. After all, I was calling into question the illusions that morally sustained people. Yet the destruction of false hopes led to a painful disappointment. In this sense, it is easier for me near the front: no illusions – no disappointments.

Now, as the Russian army advances, the future looks bleak, and death is sometimes so close that it feels as if there is no future at all. Paradoxically, to bring it back, one must give up expecting it.

Distortion of perception and a passive mindset. The image of the future always diverges from reality. Moreover, the very expectation of the future distorts the perception of the present. Before the war, no one imagined that the future could be so terrifying, and for the sake of temporary economic gain Europeans, including Ukrainians, indulged a dictator instead of preparing for war. But even the war did not lead to universal awakening; it merely changed the nature of illusory expectations.

Expectation of a catastrophic future suppresses the will, while optimism in expectation leads to relaxation – and both prevent readiness for the future. In 2022, we waited: new weapons were about to arrive that would change the situation on the battlefield, and once we reached the 1991 borders, peace would come. Illusory expectations made it impossible to see that the war would not have ended regardless of the outcome of the counteroffensive, and that survival therefore requires preparation for a long war of attrition.

For many, their attitude toward the future is like a weather forecast – you accept it as inevitable. But if you absolutely cannot come to terms with it, you look for another, more optimistic forecaster… or military analyst. This forms a passive mindset. Its cost in wartime is excessive, and the future always turns out to be different from what we expected. An active mindset means that the future is not awaited but designed on the basis of one’s own decisions.

Vision of the future. Expectation always distorts the perception of the present. A vision of the future that is formed not from expectation but from an awareness of one’s own capabilities and intentions, on the contrary, allows for an adequate perception of the present. The future is not a fact given like a weather forecast, but a possibility that is constantly shaped by our decisions; it exists in our inner intention as the vector of our aspirations. This makes it possible to accept reality as it is, without reshaping it to fit illusory expectations. Instead, we change our internal priorities.

Reality is frightening: too much has been done wrong, too much theft and betrayal has occurred to expect victory over Russia passively. And there is no need to wait passively if there is an opportunity, within this frightening reality, to build an alternative project of the future – a project of victory over Russia. A vision of the future is not an expectation, but a system of priorities and a general vector of aspirations based on an understanding of reality without illusions.