Millions of ordinary Ukrainians are fighting a new war this month, far from the front lines. They’re fighting cold and darkness rather than enemy soldiers and bullets and artillery. But if the first results are any indication, they’ll be up to the task.

To see what this war looks like for many of us, you just have to step into an elevator. Natalia Horban, 36, and her 18-month-old daughter Alina returned to their apartment building after a late morning walk last week. They arrived 10 minutes before noon, when a scheduled blackout was supposed to start. But no sooner had they entered their elevator than the power gave out. The emergency button didn’t work, and neither did the phone. Natalia began to bang on the door, and the concierge downstairs heard her and called the emergency services. If things had gone differently, the mother and her child could have spent up to five hours in the elevator. As it happened, they only spent two.

It was no fun, to be sure. But at least they had a bit of support: a box left in the elevator containing some food and sedatives. They didn’t end up using any of the supplies, but just having the box in the elevator was a great comfort. “I didn’t use the box, but psychologically it made the whole thing a lot easier,” Natalia told me.

Earlier this month, Russia launched a bombing campaign specifically targeting civilian infrastructure all across Ukraine — including cities close to the western border. Since then, Ukrainians have been adapting to radically changed conditions. President Volodymyr Zelensky said that about 4 million people were subjected to electricity rationing only on Oct. 28. It might be worse as Russia has attacked even more electricity facilities since. Recently, as much as 80 percent of Kyiv residents have found themselves without running water.

Ukrainian roads, even national highways, have lost their lighting; there is little light on the city streets. Villages, towns and cities don't have electricity for hours almost every day.

So how do ordinary Ukrainians fight back? We are stocking up on warm clothes and candles and giving each other batteries and power banks as gifts. We are turning off appliances to economize on electricity. In our building, it was the local barber shop that started the emergency box in the elevator, filling it with cookies, water, garbage bags and medicine. On the first day, people in three entryways of the building got stuck in the elevators during power outages. The next day, residents filled the boxes with bottled water, chocolates, fruit and makeshift first-aid kits.

No one would claim that we’re enjoying this. Karyna Kadun is a doctor who lives in Irpin, which was destroyed by the Russians during the initial invasion. She told me that it’s still hard to remain connected with the world since the latest blackouts started: “When the power goes out, everyone switches to mobile internet, and then the connection is so bad that it’s impossible to even read the news. We don’t even know what’s happening around us. Yesterday, something exploded nearby — we didn’t even know what it was.”

For many Ukrainians, some of these hardships feel familiar. In the 1990s, after the fall of the Soviet Union, electricity became a luxury. I remember doing school homework by candlelight. No one could watch TV or listen to the radio, and neighbors would get together to share what news there was. Our neighbor Halyna sometimes knitted sweaters in our kitchen; that’s how we entertained ourselves without light and saved candles.

In my hometown of Kherson, we couldn’t even imagine that the taps marked “hot” could ever have warm water. We had cold water twice a day — one hour in the morning and one in the evening. If we got more running water than that, it felt like a holiday. And this was happening in almost every region, except in Kyiv, where things were better.

But there is a fundamental difference between then and now. What happened then was because of the poverty that ensued from the collapse of the U.S.S.R. What’s happening now is the direct result of Russia’s war. Perhaps paradoxically, these new blackouts and the loss of heat and running water underscore just how much progress Ukraine has achieved since the Soviet days.

Ukrainians are not giving up. We believe that this crisis will end. We know that Russian President Vladimir Putin is the leader of a poor, extremely corrupt and unequal country, whose soldiers in Ukraine steal toilets and washing machines. Now, he is trying to bring the dysfunctional 1990s back to Ukraine — but we’re not going to let him. We refuse. We know that we can win the war, and we don’t want to go back to the past. We’ve been fighting for our independence for 31 years, and we know that it’s the most precious thing we’ve achieved.

“We just need to go through this,” Natalia told me after her elevator adventure. “It makes no sense to go to western Ukraine, because it’s the same everywhere in the country. And I don’t want to leave the country. I want to stay at home. I hope that everything will be over soon.”

Millions of Ukrainians share her wish. Perhaps the Western countries that are considering whether to send us more modern air-defense systems can take it into account.