KYIV, Ukraine — Artem Kudria leaned on a blue bean bag, his laptop plugged in, hood on and his feet — dressed in orange socks — stretched out in front of him.
He was hard at work as a designer for a technology company. But this wasn’t his living room or even an office space. Instead, he worked in a department store furniture showroom, not far from a colorful children’s bedroom and a model kitchen that would have stood at Ikea in another time and place.
With power outages an all-too-familiar burden of everyday life in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv, the store, dubbed Epicentr, has opened up a large open space for people to set up and work.
“I don’t have power in my office, there was no light this morning, that’s why I came here,” explains Mr Kudria, 28. response is to resist, to be defiant.”
Around him, dozens of workers had held similar positions on the sprawling third floor in a space once cluttered with a selection of tiles, sinks, and living room furniture.
As cities and towns across Ukraine grapple with power cuts, the result of Russian airstrikes on critical infrastructure, workers across all industries have had to adapt quickly. And thanks to innovation, creativity and the generosity of companies, they are finding a way to continue one of the fundamental aspects of society: work, even if it is sometimes interrupted by air raid sirens.
Supermarkets have set up benches and extension cords for those experiencing power outages and are also advertising their parking lots as a free workspace where people can go online in their cars. Open laptops are a common sight in Kiev’s metro stations, where people can get online and continue working remotely while sheltering for hours amid the risk of airstrikes.
The free-operating hubs in places like Epicentr are comfortable and warm. The store has a small coffee machine, free internet and enough power outlets. Recently, extension cords were strewn across the floor.
Last week, Mr. Kudria came to work for three days when the electricity went out, and he was back this week. He said the space had everything he needed to continue his design work.
“The most important thing is to at least do something,” he said productively, even if it only meant three or four hours of work.
Nearby, a large banner with the words “Unbreakable Hub” – the name the store gave to this free space – hung above a young man wearing headphones and editing audio clips. Across the room, beneath a display of lighting fixtures once viewed by customers, employees hunched over laptops.
Yevheniia Hrulenko, 30, a speech therapist, held a session with one of her customers from the store via video call after the power went out in her home.
“I have to come here at least a few times a week to teach classes,” she said.
She said her customers also had to get used to the power outage.
“At first they canceled classes because they had no power,” she explained. “Now they say, ‘Please wait five minutes, I’m going to the nearest cafe or place with a generator.'”
Many of Kiev’s power cuts are foreseeable: the local government has set a schedule of when power will be cut in several areas to save energy. But due to air raids there are still unpredictable blackouts.
Iryna Bezverkha, who works as a consultant, was rushing to Epicentr on Tuesday afternoon when suddenly the power went out in her house.
“If it’s planned or scheduled outage, I try to adapt,” says Ms Bezverkha, 49, who tried to adjust her schedule around the outage. “But if I’ve called and I have an emergency, I’ll come here.”
On one side of her a wedding photographer was editing photos; on the other side was an accountant.
“It’s a challenge,” she said, to the uncertainty of living in a country at war. “You keep things going and keep doing what you do in your day-to-day life. We just have to adapt.”
At a central Kiev metro station during Tuesday morning’s rush hour, commuters crowded platforms and brushed past each other as they hurried to connecting trains, an indication of how many people were on their way to work.
“Right now I’m actually going from one office to another,” said Olha Dorofeyeva, hurrying to an oncoming train.
She said she works for a government organization that has three office spaces in Kiev, and the power had just gone out in the first one, forcing her to move. Ms. Dorofeyeva, 40, said she changes locations twice a day to stay ahead of the blackouts.
As she put it, “We all have certain duties, and each of us has his or her own front.”
Many people in Kiev said their determination to keep working came from a commitment to keep Ukrainian society going, but also from the practical need to provide for their families.
Serhii Titenko, 34, who works as a quality assurance engineer who tests software for an IT company, described how his office has become more resilient to the power outages.
“We have a little ‘invincibility point’ in our office,” he said. “It’s warm and we have power.”
He said his company has purchased generators and a Starlink terminal, which provides online connectivity via satellites in orbit around conventional providers.
“Everyone is trying to work,” he said. “If you need power, you buy a generator or use alternatives, such as car batteries at home. Long story short, none of my friends have left, everyone is trying to stay here, be useful and work.”
The Ukrainian government has made it a priority to keep the country’s internet services up and running and is looking at ways to ensure mobile carriers have enough energy to power their operations even if the power grid goes down. In an interview, Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s digital transformation minister, said that the number of people accessing the internet via mobile data in Kiev in the second week of this month was similar to the same week a year earlier, before the Russian invasion.
Many small businesses, shops and restaurants now have generators, making working in those industries that can’t be done remotely less difficult.
Anna Polivoda, 32, works in Salon Special in the center of Kiev and has been working for the past few weeks as the business owners have made it more resilient to power outages. When the regular fall blackouts first started, she had to shift all of her scheduled haircuts to daytime, though she sometimes had a co-worker hold up a flashlight when it got too dark.
Mrs. Polivoda couldn’t connect the hair dryer and had to send customers home with wet hair. But that didn’t stop them from coming.
“People have just gotten used to these difficulties,” she said. “No one was angry, everyone understood.”
Then, late last month, the salon owners bought a generator that allowed them to keep the lights on and run the hair dryers. They bought a larger boiler to provide a surplus of hot water.
For now, Ms. Polivoda’s clients will continue to book haircuts and other beauty treatments.
“It’s an act of defiance in some ways for normal people to do normal things, like get their hair done, get their nails done, go get coffee, the cinema, the theater,” she said. “It’s really in contrast to the war.”
Oleksandra Mykolyshyn and Natalia Yermak contributed reporting from Kiev.
