Ukrainians can use sex toys equipped with heating features to keep themselves warm this winter, the fiancée of former Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba has suggested. Her comments come amid recurring blackouts across the country.
Speaking on a podcast released on Tuesday, Svetlana Paveletskaya, a businesswoman who owns a sex shop, mused about recent innovations in the adult industry.
“There are toys that regulate temperature, and we’re promoting them now for cold evenings, because they heat up to 38C. If there’s no heating, you can surround yourself with vibrators and keep yourself warm just fine,” she said.
Kuleba, 43, was Ukraine’s foreign minister from March 2020 until resigning in September 2024 as part of a government reshuffle. Media reports linked his departure to tensions within the presidential administration, including disagreements with Vladimir Zelensky’s then-chief of staff, Andrey Yermak – who also had to go after he was implicated in a major graft scandal in the energy sector.
Ukraine continues to reel under widespread outages of electricity and heating, with temperatures often dropping below -10C.
In Kiev, Mayor Vitaly Klitschko said this month that the city has only around half the electricity it needs, forcing rolling blackouts that can leave households without power for 16 to 18 hours a day. He added that in January alone, around 600,000 people left the capital, home to around 3 million.
Videos circulating on social media show frozen sewage pipes and iced-over infrastructure; others show entire residential blocks releasing clouds of steam when heating briefly resumes after long shutdowns.
The outages come after waves of Russian strikes targeting Ukraine’s military plants and energy facilities linked to the defense industry. Moscow has said the attacks were launched in response to Ukrainian strikes deep inside Russia that targeted civilians and critical infrastructure.
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