Ukrainian authorities are trying to quantify the damage caused by one of the largest Russian airstrikes of the war earlier this week. The attack targeted the country’s energy infrastructure, damaging a sector that was already attacked several times by Moscow this spring.
While much of Ukraine is still experiencing the last days of a very hot summer, this week’s strikes have brought into focus concerns about the harsh cold months ahead. “This winter will be harsh, that’s for sure,” said Nataliia Shapoval, head of the institute at the Kyiv School of Economics.
Monday’s attack came during the morning rush hour and involved over 100 missiles and over 100 drones. It targeted energy infrastructure across the country, from the east near the front lines to the far west near the border with EU countries.
While strikes in the spring targeted power generation capacity, Monday’s attacks focused primarily on distribution infrastructure, such as electrical substations, leading to emergency blackouts across the country that escalated into planned blackouts affecting Kyiv and many other cities.
Many estimates suggest that Russia had already destroyed around half of Ukraine’s energy capacity before this week’s attacks. Repair work has been ongoing throughout the summer, but as Kyiv continues to request increased air defense support from Western allies, there are fears that further attacks could turn a difficult situation into a disaster.
“It is not easy to improve the situation, but additional attacks can make it worse,” said Andrian Prokip, a Kyiv-based energy expert at the Kennan Institute in Washington DC.
“Even in the best case scenario, there will be scheduled breaks. What these look like depends on the temperature. At -5 degrees Celsius, you could expect a schedule of seven hours of rest and two hours of work,” he said.
At a conference in Berlin in June, President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia had destroyed 80 percent of Ukraine’s thermal power generation and a third of its hydroelectric power generation. On Tuesday, he declined to comment on what other damage Monday’s attacks had caused.
“I don’t really like energy PR. It’s not very helpful if the enemy knows what damage they’ve done. The information about the state of our energy facilities and what we’re currently doing there should be kept secret,” he said.
“It was a heavy blow and the review is still ongoing,” Mykhailo Podoliak, an aide to Zelensky, told the Guardian in Kyiv. “We know what is needed: repair work and, in parallel, more support for air defense,” he said.
Shapoval’s institute estimates that Russian attacks on energy infrastructure have caused $16 billion in damage and $40 billion in lost revenue since the start of the large-scale invasion.
The country is undoubtedly better prepared for winter today than it was at the start of the war. Hospitals, critical infrastructure and many businesses have generator capacity. In Kyiv, life continued almost as normal during the long power outages this week. Small generators whirred outside cafes, restaurants and other shops.
However, the frequent power outages expected during the winter are likely to have a number of knock-on effects, ranging from affecting the elderly and people with reduced mobility living in high-rise buildings who cannot use elevators if the building does not have a generator, to reducing business activity and, as a result, lower tax revenues. Prolonged power outages could prove catastrophic for heavy industry in the east of the country, which has so far shown remarkable resilience despite more than two years of widespread war.
There are “many small and big stories” that have arisen from power outages, Shapoval said. In much of the east, where classes are being held online because of the threat of strikes, the blackout is making it difficult to power devices and provide internet access for classes. In some high-rise buildings, water cannot be pumped to upper floors due to power outages, and the “doomsday scenario” is that Russian strikes will also lead to major water and electricity shortages, Shapoval said.
In June, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Brussels planned to finance the construction of smaller generators across the country. “The aim is to contribute to the decentralization of the electricity system and thus increase resilience,” she said.
Regulations on gas turbine power generation have been relaxed, leading to a rise in small-scale power generation, which can be carried out anywhere there is access to gas pipelines and power cables. The systems are set up in shipping containers or small buildings. “Some companies do this to meet their own needs, others to connect to the grid and then sell the electricity on the market,” Prokip said.
The renewed focus on energy follows Ukraine’s surprise incursion into Russia’s Kursk region earlier this month. Kyiv now controls a chunk of Russian territory, changing the dynamic on the battlefield even as Ukrainian forces remain on the defensive in the eastern Donbass region.
The objectives of the operation, which Ukraine says it did not disclose to its allies in advance, are still unclear. On Wednesday, CIA Deputy Director David Cohen said he expected Ukraine to try to hold the area “for some time.” Kyiv has said it controls about 1,200 square kilometers of territory and wants to create a “buffer zone” in the border region to prevent Russian attacks on Ukrainian territory.
“We can be sure that Putin will launch a counteroffensive to try to retake this area,” Cohen said at a security summit in Maryland. “I think we expect this to be a difficult fight for the Russians.”
