Russia uses new tactic for attacks at Ukrainian energy grid
The aggressor country’s attempts to destroy energy grids in individual Ukrainian regions remain the main complicating factor for the current heating season
The full year 2025 has been marked by a significant escalation of Russian against Ukrainian energy infrastructure, focusing primarily on gas production and underground gas storage facilities at the beginning of the year. Later on, the aggressor updated its tactic, shifting to systematic strikes on infrastructure in individual regions, alternated with sporadic attacks on specific energy facilities in other regions. The goal, as before, remains unchanged: to leave Ukrainians without heat and electricity ahead of the cold season. And this is outright terror. Energy sector workers are making extraordinary efforts to prevent the Russians from achieving their goal. Here Ukrinform explores the current situation in the energy sector and makes a forecast of future trends.
WHAT THE UTILITIES SECTOR IS ENTERING WINTER WITH
In fact, the heating season in Ukraine was launched even before its official announcement. According to current standards, heat supply should start when the average daily temperatures drop below +8 degrees Celsius for three consecutive days. A separate standard is provided for social facilities such as schools, hospitals, or daycare centers, setting minimum temperature in unheated conditions at +16 degrees Celsius.
So, the heating season started on October 28 in more than half the Ukrainian regions.
"The heating season has already begun in all regions of Ukraine, including Kyiv City. It began in October with the phased connection of boiler houses, with social infrastructure facilities being the first in line for connection to the heating grid," Kostyantyn Kovalchuk, Deputy Minister of Community and Territorial Development told an Ukrinform briefing.
87% of social infrastructure institutions (hospitals, schools, etc.) and 73% of high-rise apartment buildings had already been connected to the hearting grid as of November 11, according to Kovalchuk.
Everything looks much better than it could have been amid war. Naftogaz had accumulated the planned 13.2 billion cubic meters of gas in storage facilities by the end of October, and plans to continue importing "blue fuel" further. On the sidelines of a specialized conference in Athens, an agreement was signed with the Polish company Orlen on the supply of an additional minimum of 300 million cubic meters of US-produced liquified natural gas to Ukraine.
Overall, Naftogaz plans to ensure sustainable gas imports throughout the heating season. While the company’s previous management insisted on gas self-sufficiency, there are no illusions remaining about the inevitability of imports. Ukraine will need imported supplies to sustain the upcoming heating seasons.
Power transmission networks have been appropriately prepared for operation during the cold season. Ukrenergo reported a three-fold equipment stockpile above the necessary minimum. Had it not been for Russian attacks, the heating season would have pass smoothly, Ukrenergo has said.
RUSSIA IS AGAIN CHANGING ITS TACTIC OF ATTACKS ON UKRAINIAN ENERGY INFRASTRUCTURE
This is where the key risk for the heating season lies, which has had to be countered constantly for four consecutive years now. Russian attacks.
“Even before the start of the heating season and at the beginning of this month, the enemy has already carried out eight mixed drone and missile attacks involving the most advanced long-range missiles armed, in particular, with cluster warheads,” according to Deputy Minister of Energy Mykola Kolisnyk. Where such weapons are involved, repair and restoration work is extremely complicated by the need for clearing the affected energy site from the debris and unexploded ordnance.
On top of that, the Russian military persist in employing their tactic of air defense penetration. The most recent Russian attacks were distinguished by the use of a large number of different means of air attack deployed almost simultaneously, Dmytro Sakharuk, CEO of D.Trading said speaking at an extraordinary session of the Kyiv Security Forum. In addition, Russian military are persistently attacking Ukrainian thermal generation infrastructure with ballistic missiles.
Oleksandr Kharchenko, director of the Energy Research Center noted in a podcast for the Center for Economic Strategy that Ukrainian energy companies are not in a position to ensure sustainable and predictable power outage schedules due to constant Russian attacks. According to his observations, the attacks can be categorized into: (1) attacks on the gas production/transmission/storage infrastructure: (2) attacks on regional infrastructures located primarily along the front line, and (3) massive attacks on specific locations, aimed to damage or destroy generation capacities, high-voltage networks, and heat generating facilities.
“This type of attack is the most difficult to recover from quickly,” Kharchenko emphasized.
The Russians have chosen a strategy of cutting off particular regions from the overall energy grid, Kharchenko says. “As a matter of fact, they have understood that where they attack everything at once on a national scale, these efforts yield little effect. Less powerful attacks on stand-alone facilities are relatively easy to neutralize with our fortification lines, air defenses, and electronic warfare countermeasures,” the expert says.
In addition, Kharchenko doubts the Russians’ ability to completely separate the western-bank part of the energy grid from its eastern-bank part. At the same time, the aggressor state can complicate the transmission of electricity between these parts of the energy grid with persistent, targeted attacks.
A separate set of targets the Russians never forget about is Ukrainian coal mining sector. In the Dnipropetrovsk region, eight coal mines were de-energized due to a November 6 attack that left almost 3,000 miners trapped underground. Attacks on the coal mining sector facilities continued throughout October. Ukraine currently has a reserve of 2+ million tons of thermal coal for heat generation, but if Ruasian attacks persist, this can put Ukraine's energy security at serious risk.
PROTECTION: IT WORKS, BUT IS NOT AVAILABLE EVERYWHERE
Since 2023, Ukraine has begun building physical protective structures over energy facilities. Kharchenko says citing a report from an ad-hoc parliamentary investigative commission that this approach is working. Thus, out of 119 key high-voltage transformer substations, 74 have already been fitted out with second-level protection, and construction work is underway on 45 more substations. That being said, only one of the newly protected substations was destroyed by a direct missile hit. It is worth noting here that the effectiveness of physical protection in the form of concrete structures from direct hits, for example, a ballistic attack, is not guaranteed.
“At the regional level, unfortunately, most substations remain unprotected. The exceptions are the Kharkiv Oblast, Mykolaiv Oblast, and part of the Odesa Oblast. But most of regional governments have done nothing at all to protect their respective energy grids,” says Kharchenko.
The result is that most of the electricity distribution network remains vulnerable to Russian attacks. The Chernihiv Oblast is an example, where the provincial capital found itself blacked out during lengthy periods in October due to Russian attacks.
The construction of first- and second-level protective structures at 330 kW and 750 kW substations is more than 95% complete as of mid-October, according to Serhiy Sykhomlyn, Head of the State Agency for Restoration and Development of Infrastructure. Simultaneously, the Agency is working on the protection of 110 kW and 150 kW substations located primarily in the Zaporizhzhia and Kharkiv regions.
According to public reports from different government agencies, the readiness degree of protective structures over energy facilities varies depending on their place in line for protection. From the very beginning - back in the spring of 2023 - a waiting list of critical high-voltage substations in need of urgent protection was compiled, and new facilities have been constantly added to the list ever since.
However, the Restoration Agency doesn’t have jurisdiction over all projects on substation protection. Ukrenergo, for example, has protected some of its transformer stations on its own. The Agency does not have the competence to coordinate construction projects for protective structures over infrastructure elements of nuclear power plants.
And, honestly, not every energy facility can be protected with concrete. Building a shelter over a 750 kW transformer substation is not an easy but quite realistic task. But it’s impossible to build a similar protective structure over a thermal power unit or some gas infrastructure facilities, this due to the parameters of these facilities and the specifics of their operation.
Therefore, effective protection of energy sector facilities is fundamentally dependent on having strong and effective air defense capabilities. To this end, Ukraine is closely cooperating with international partners. Germany, in particular, has recently provided Ukraine with two Patriot missile defense systems.
As the all-out war in Ukraine is grinding on for the fourth year now, Russia does not stop its attacks at our energy grid. And the fight for light and heat is two-sided. On the one hand, there are our energy workers and military, who are constantly working to protect critical infrastructures. They are counteracted by the Russians, who are constantly devising new tactics for attacks and improving their air attack means and methods. Shahed drones, for example, are already difficult to shoot down with mobile air defense groups due to their flight altitude, while the nomenclature of anti-ballistics weapons available to Ukraine is limited.
Фото Photo via freepik
The current heating season promises to be challenging. At the very onset of the season, Trypilska Thermal Power Plant outside of Kyiv and Zmiivska Thermal Power plant in the Kharkiv Region ceased their operations following a new attack. Due to attacks on the power substations that transmit electricity from nuclear power units into the grid, nuclear power plants are forced to regularly reduce performance of their power units. All this combined causes major emergency power outages immediately after massive strikes.
It is too late to talk now about what should have been done to get through the cold season. Indeed, efforts aimed at bolstering the resilience of our energy grid against Russian attacks will continue as the new heating season has kicked off. But the effect will not be seen perhaps until next year.
That being said, however, a total nationwide blackout is not expected neither by energy professionals nor analysts. We are better prepared, and the Russians no longer have the capabilities they had previously. At the same time, individual regions may suffer from the consequences of the systematic destruction of regional infrastructure, most particularly in frontline areas.
Given the complexity of the situation, energy experts are asking everyone to be economical in their consumption of not only electricity but also gas. Of course, there are households with centralized heating where temperature adjustments are impossible. But where there is temperature control or individual heating, overheating can be avoided by setting indoor temperatures at +20 degrees Celsius or lower.
Economical energy consumption is not something that will have an immediate positive impact on the state of our energy grid, but it will allow for fewer power outages. We can only get through this heating season with joint efforts.
Viktoriya Nakonechna, Kyiv
Headline photo via Suspilne Kharkiv
