Ukrainians get creative to keep businesses alive amid winter blackouts

Escape rooms — immersive experiences where visitors are locked inside an enclosed space and must find clues to make their way out — are “booming in popularity” in Ukraine, Nazarenko said.

Nazarenko said his escape-room chain, XRoom, hit a record number of visits last month, even as operating without electricity became increasingly difficult.

The business’ escape rooms rely mainly on interactive performances, where hired actors physically engage with the participants, frightening them or giving them clues.

With war-related stress now woven into the fabric of his customers’ daily lives, visitors now “want more pain” — and are open to more physical, thrill-seeking experiences that allow them “to switch from everyday worries and feel strong emotions in controlled conditions,” Nazarenko said.

“Conveniently, this can be done in the dark and doesn’t require centralized electricity,” he added.

As temperatures drop and the hours of darkness grow longer, Moscow has intensified its bombardment of Ukraine’s power plants and substations — a tactic it has deployed every year since the start of its full-scale invasion in 2022.

Winter in Ukraine is typically snowy and cold, with temperatures between December and March sometimes plunging to as low as minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit, according to data from the World Health Organization’s latest winter risk assessment for Ukraine.

This year, emergency power cuts have been imposed across Ukraine since early October, in what the Ministry of Energy said were necessary steps to stabilize the grid. As repair work continues, scheduled outages are leaving many residents and businesses without light or heat for eight to 16 hours a day.

Large businesses have tackled the problem by investing heavily in generators and alternative energy sources, but for Ukraine’s small businesses, the price tag is often too steep.

“We wanted to buy a large generator, but they have now doubled or tripled in price,” said Iryna Golotina, co-owner of Under Wonder restaurant in Kyiv.

In a phone call with NBC News, Golotina, 46, said she, like many other small businesses, had been forced to get creative to keep the doors open and customers happy.

The restaurant created special “Black Menus,” featuring only dishes that can be prepared without electricity.

At first, they used candles for backup lighting, “then we made lanterns from string lights and placed them in large vases, creating glowing decorative pieces that our guests loved,” she said.

Golotina said on one night when the power suddenly came back on, diners immediately asked the staff to switch off the lights again because the lanterns made the atmosphere more “magical.”

Some customers told her it reminded them of a dining hall from “Harry Potter,” she said.

Kyiv remains a frequent target of Russia’s deadly drone and missile attacks.

Moscow maintains it only selects targets tied to Ukraine’s military infrastructure, despite the repeated strikes on apartment blocks, heating stations and the country’s already fragile energy network.

Analysts say Russia is seeking to erode morale, pushing daily life to its limits and tightening pressure on an economy already weakened by nearly four years of war.

Mark McNamee, a co-founder of the Ukraine Business Network, said that Ukraine’s economy continues to be relatively resilient, but is “definitely being deeply tested.”

Every economic sector is currently being affected by the power outages, with manufacturing sectors “the hardest hit,” he said in an email last month. Manufacturers in eastern Ukraine have experienced “more severe and frequent attacks,” added McNamee, who is based in Kyiv.

Service industries haven’t escaped the ripple effects either, McNamee said, with closures of retail stores and other businesses during attacks or blackouts affecting consumers’ moods.

This means that fewer people feel inclined to leave their homes or spend money, he added, which adds even more pressure on companies already struggling to stay afloat.

Evgen Primachok, an entrepreneur from Kyiv, said he had long dreamed of running his own business. He opened Khoryv Coffee in September 2022, just a week or two before the country experienced its first wave of wartime power outages.

At the time, he said, customers flocked to his generator-powered cafe seeking warmth and Wi-Fi. But when outages returned this year, he said, many people had adapted their homes with backup energy sources, meaning far fewer ventured out to the coffee shop.

“It was extremely difficult,” Primachok said in a video interview. “For two months, people barely left their homes. Everyone just stayed inside.”

To keep Khoryv Coffee afloat, Primachok also said he had to get creative, rebranding as a community haven instead of a simple coffee shop.

“Right now, you cannot just sell coffee and earn from it,” he said. “We have to practically bend over backwards to make more people interested and come to us. We had chess-playing nights, music nights, old Ukrainian movie screenings and more.”