Sveta has no doubt about why the Ukrainian-held southern city of Mykolaiv, a shipbuilding center that is home to a half a million people, has gone without fresh water for the past six months.
"They (the Russians) are committing genocide against us," she growled as she waited this week with dozens of others to fill containers with water from tanks hauled to a downtown thoroughfare aboard an electric tramway repair car.
The shutoff is bitter affirmation for Sveta, and some 220,000 other residents who remain in the oft-shelled city, that Russian President Vladimir Putin's war on Ukraine extends beyond the battlefield to civilian infrastructure.