How to organize work during blackout in winter?

For some personal reasons she is not ready to evacuate

I do not expect anyone to agree with my logic and I know this does not answer your question but the only responsible answer in my opinion would be to do what you can to help her get past the personal reasons.

Any technological answer anyone here could give would just make her a target. Satellite phone or computer terminal? Target. Generator? Target. Portable solar generator and panels? Target. In my opinion she needs to grab anyone and anything that can not be replaced and relocate. I would even further add that nobody should expect to go back to Ukraine for at least a decade based on historical patterns. Perhaps your company could expense and write-off her travel and first few months rent somewhere?

If you really care about this person as a human, just tell her to do what she can when she has power, and when she’s able to evacuate help her out however you can. I think it’s funny that you seem to be more focused on the work she can do but I’m assuming you do care about her well being first and foremost.

I have some doubt on idea of keep working under blackout conditions. One is not easy, to code when your body and toes are suffering from cold temperature. Maybe reducing the number of meetings can help her to use her batteries for some more important tasks.

Ukrainian here staying in Ukraine the whole time. Not a developer, working in a senior management role, but still heavily relied on the internet and electricity. Totally understand the reasons why your employee doesn't want to move out of the country.

I assume that she lives not in Enerhodar (which is occupied). Then only 2 possible locations, and they are pretty safe. According to western and Ukrainian analysts, massive scale attack from Belarus is impossible right now. And the possibility of Russians moving to the right bank of Dnipro is very-very distant right now. The only 2 problems are: missile strikes and infrastructure failures. So the comments here that generators or satellite internet will make her a target is nonsense. Missiles are too expensive to target each household with a generator.

So next I share what I did and what works for me: 1. Moved with my family to a distant small village in central Ukraine (Vinnytsia region), where we don’t rely on central heating and water supply. The only network we are connected to is eletricity. Life here is very cheap. We bought a house for $3000 and paid around $10k to make it convenient for us (shower / toilet, water, heating). Today there were 5 strikes heard - the attack was on Ladyzhyn electricity station 30 minutes drive from us. Living in even small city makes people dependent on central heating systems and water supply. Living in private house makes you more independent. If your employee doesn’t want to move somewhere to Europe or western Ukraine maybe she can rent a house in a village near her city like 20—40 minutes drive. It will give her flexibility not to rely on central systems, visit friends and family in the city, and no sirens heard here, never! And event in such a village we have access to quite good healthcare / dentists / and buying local food. 2. We use our own heating 3. Ordered starlink. For Ukrainians it’s very long to wait it, so my relatives from Belgium helped ordered to their address and sent it here. Maybe you can help your employee with logistics delivering satellite kit to her. Again starlink in remote village works better than in the city because sky is clear. In the city if she lives in apartments it will be hard to install it. 4. I bought a portable power station. It’s enough for me to work for a couple of days and to power refrigerator. But during the war there was never more than 4 hours without electricity here. I bought it before massive strikes on infrastructure. Nowadays they are in deficit. So again you can help her with logistics buying somewhere in Europe and delivering to Ukraine. My friend from Sweden helped me to buy power station for my parents and sent it in Ukraine. 5. What I need right now is a generator. They are in deficit here. But my relatives in Belgium are helping with it delivering it here. Moreover Ukrainian government cancelled all taxes / customs on generators and power stations, so it became even more accessible in terms of price. The only problem is logistics. Sorry for bad English.

Edit: Even today after massive strike we didn’t had electricity for like 4 hours. My parents live in Kyiv and it’s much worse there - no electricity and water and even cell connection for the whole day. So my point is basically to stay away from large cities, because they are more vilnerable

Petrol generator or batteries bank. The former is not an option in a flat, though, but is the best option to withstand long electricity cuts. Neither are prohibitively expensive (at least in normal circumstances) but might be harder and harder to find.

Try to convince her to move. Cancel her workload and deadlines and tell her you’ll keep paying her regardless of her output. That’s the compassionate thing to do. Anything else is tantamount to trying to squeeze blood out of a stone.

Alternative power sources