Fresh new hell 2026

Ice, ICE, and a divine comedy that ain’t funny

In his 14th century narrative poem Inferno, Dante Alighieri described the ninth and final circle of hell as a frozen wasteland. The deepest layer of hell, according to Dante, is not a blazing inferno but a frozen lake swept with windchill, stripping sinners of warmth, encasing them in ice, depriving them of movement. Add to that the possibility of pipes bursting, a near-total electricity blackout, and drones lurking low to hit tall residential buildings, and you basically get Kyiv.

Kyiv is literally encased in ice right now. A single fateful day of +1 Celsius and freezing rain snuck in right before temperatures abruptly dropped to -16. Trees, cars, roads, walkways, and (most importantly) electricity wires are sheathed in a thick coat of ice. Even the iron unbreakability of the Ukrainian Railways broke: trains run with a delay of 5 hours plus, because ice buildup on overhead wires doesn’t allow the roof devices to make proper electrical contact, cutting off power.

Kyiv’s mayor Vitalii Klytchko is urging the city residents to leave for a while until the weather improves. But how? And to where? Trains run with delay; car accidents abound due to icy roads, and many other regions of Ukraine have it worse. Chernihiv, Odesa, Dnipro, and Zaporizhzhia were all plunged into total blackouts one by one - with no electricity returning even for a couple of hours a day. But there are angels in hell - the utility companies’ workers are doing miracles, resurrecting electric power with astonishing speed given the subzero temperatures.

Kyiv today. At least it’s beautiful.

Oh yeah, and who has turned Kyiv into a frozen hellscape? russians did. Those base, vile, cynical beasts capitalized on cold weather as an opportunity to maximise damage to civilian infrastructure. The other day, January 9th, russia struck Kyiv with circa 35 missiles and 226 drones, and used a nuclear-capable missile (the infamous ‘Oreshnik’) against Lviv region. Hello, my first full night sheltering of 2026.

In contrast to summertime sheltering, the winter night I spent in the metro felt shorter. Lulled by my body’s wintertime hibernation rhythms, I passed out quickly, burritoed in my sleeping bag, and slept until the time metro trains started running at 6AM. By the way, the metro trains keep running despite the power outages! The intervals between arrivals had to increase from 5 minutes to 10-15, but that’s a discomfort Kyiv residents can handle, so long as the city is not paralyzed. For if the metro stops running altogether, Kyiv is just one infrastructural nightmare stuffed with a traffic jam. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.

The mayor’s suggestion to leave the city produced quite an opposite effect, it seems - at least in my social bubble. Folks are making plans, selecting films to watch together, places to go to together. I’ve put down a deposit to celebrate my upcoming birthday at one of my favorite Kyiv bars; therefore, I have faith that I’ll still be here next week too, and that folks will join me to celebrate this wild and dangerous life of a burnt-out millennial queer. Kyiv is MY city, you assholes, and I will leave it when I choose to. (I know, I probably shouldn’t be this belligerently optimistic. It will be a bit awkward if I do, in fact, have to leave within a week because of burst pipes or complete and unyielding blackout.)

Global warming used to be on our side. Winters 2022-onwards had been mild, damp, moderately cold. Mass drone strikes couldn’t take out the entire infrastructure: electricity consumption wasn’t as intense. Winter-2026 is the coldest of the past five-ish years on record. And russia is exploiting this happenstance to make life hellish for civilians, for our most vulnerable populations, for frontline regions. Sure, this is war, and civilians shouldn’t count on having a comfortable life. It’s been a lot though - nearly four years of terror and intimidation, with no prospect of victory, allies weakened and paralyzed - frozen - by the American reversion to imperialism.

I had lived in Minneapolis - St. Paul for five years during undergrad and shortly after, and my heart keeps breaking further as I see the fresh new horrors, a queer woman Renee Good murdered by ICE in broad daylight with plenty of witnesses. The recent impunity of ICE in the United States shows the internal - and external - transformation of the U.S. from rule of law to rule of force. 2026 is opening with events that are setting up a dangerous trajectory for this next chapter of global history, perhaps setting in motion the formal beginning of WW3, or fully reviving global imperialism in the stead of globalism. Human rights as a notion, as a concept, are receding into the background, as tyrannical rulers and governments commit evil because they can.

What can one ordinary person do, given the internet-augmented awareness of the immensity of troubles? I said this before and I’ll say it again, we’ll each have to become a grownup in this global room. Maidan - a revolution of dignity - happened in Ukraine (in the wintertime!!!) to resist an autocrat. The Ukrainian concept of Maidan, this concept of responsibility - remaining in place to defend one’s community - is the foundation of the current resistance against the russian full-scale aggression. Our history a decade ago, our history from four years ago, shows that when winter gives you frozen hell on earth, there’s the option to burn tires and molotov cocktails.

Perhap’s there’s yet another level of hell to get to - if not better, then at least new. I think we gotta keep moving, so as not to get encased in ice.

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