EU’s Ukraine envoy: Russian ‘war crime’ leaves Kyiv civilians freezing

The EU’s envoy to Kyiv accused Moscow of war crimes, describing the “humanitarian calamity” unfolding as Russian attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure leave some hundreds of thousands of people without heat amid sub-zero temperatures.

“Let’s make it very clear — this has been really a war crime to hit and freeze people in their own homes, ordinary civilians,” EU Ambassador to Ukraine Katarina Mathernová said in an interview.

Mathernová’s accusations on POLITICO’s EU Confidential podcast last week mark some of the strongest to date from an EU official since Russian President Vladimir Putin began a winter siege on Ukraine’s electric grid.

Yet the diplomat, in post since September 2023, is known for her unvarnished descriptions of Ukrainians’ daily struggles on social media and a rigorous accounting — laced with righteous anger — of Russian attacks. As the full-scale invasion grinds toward the end of its fourth year on Tuesday, Mathernová’s mission is as much about sharing Ukrainians’ perspective with the EU as it is transmitting Brussels’ lines to Kyiv.

Russia’s systematic bombardment of energy plants has turned the Ukrainian capital into a “frontline city,” she said, describing a city dotted with thousands of Red Cross tents offering tea, phone charging stations and even cots to ride out frigid nights. “Kids do homework there,” she said. “People telework or simply come to get warm.”

She pointed to a particularly ruinous attack on Feb. 3, when Russia fired five ballistic rockets that destroyed one of Kyiv’s largest thermal power plants. That left some 350,000 without heat, with temperatures dropping as low as minus 20 degrees Celsius.

Mathernová is fighting against an “information fog” that has obscured Kyiv’s acute plight, she said from her office in the capital — before the interview itself was interrupted by an air raid siren. That occurrence has become so commonplace that she displayed more concern about the audio quality than her own safety.

The EU’s embassy in Kyiv was itself bombed last summer, and nights punctuated by sirens leave everyone from government officials and foreign diplomats to everyday Ukrainians with the cumulative damage from sleep deprivation.

“I think we all suffer from PTSD by now,” she said.

Ukraine in the EU ‘house’

Yet amid this inhumane grind, Mathernová is optimistic that the prospect of some form of EU membership in 2027 could keep Ukrainians’ resolve intact. As POLITICO reported this month, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen floated the idea of “reverse enlargement” to guarantee Ukraine’s spot in the EU, even if it hasn’t met all the accession criteria — or if it faces a persistent block from Hungary.

Indeed, in the days after the interview, Slovakia and Hungary threatened to cut off emergency electricity supplies to Ukraine amid a dispute over a Russian oil shipments. Budapest also backed out of a promise to support the EU’s €90 billion loan to Ukraine, further stoking Ukraine supporters’ motivation to find solutions.

The EU “has always been very creative in terms of finding legal and institutional workarounds to difficult situations historically,” she said, pointing to the “variable geometry” of systems like Schengen and the eurozone, which include some full EU members but not all.

Mathernová offered an analogy of Ukraine being brought into a house, “not all the rooms in the house being available immediately at the outset.”

They could continue working “with the ultimate goal of having a full membership.” She added: “My understanding is that this is what colleagues in Brussels are working on.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has consistently ruled out anything less than equal EU membership, saying in November that “it has to be fully fledged.”

However, Mathernová predicted Ukrainians would accept such an arrangement “if we don’t let various narratives and disinformation about it, like this is not a full membership, etc.,” take hold. “I think if it’s a matter of anchoring Ukraine in the EU as part of its peaceful future, I’m sure they would.”

Yet just days after the interview, Mathernová was back to documenting Ukraine’s violent present. On Facebook, with a video of her standing in the snow, she detailed a new overnight toll: