Cold calculations: The Kremlin is trying to leave Ukrainians without power in winter once more

For several months, Russian forces have carried out a sustained campaign of airstrikes targeting Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. While Ukraine’s own strikes inside Russia have focused on oil refineries, gas-processing plants, petrochemical facilities, fuel depots, pipelines, and export terminals — aiming to disrupt Russia’s domestic fuel market and disrupt the oil, gas, and petroleum exports that provide most of the Kremlin’s foreign currency revenue — Moscow has made Ukrainian power plants, transformer substations, and transmission networks its primary targets.

According to leaks published in the Western media, Vladimir Putin concluded after his August meeting in Alaska with U.S. president Donald Trump that intensifying attacks on Ukraine’s critical infrastructure could help Moscow impose its own terms for a peace settlement. The current U.S. administration, Putin reportedly reasoned, is unlikely to take meaningful countermeasures. The plan has been echoed in Russian state propaganda, including in videos distributed by pro-Kremlin outlets threatening Ukrainians with a “harsh winter.”

The Alaska summit took place on Aug. 15, 2025; four of the five largest air assaults on Ukraine this year occurred in the weeks that followed. The single largest attack came on Sept. 7, 2025, when Russia launched 823 aerial weapons — 810 drones and 13 missiles. During the night of Oct. 30, 2025, another major strike hit four Ukrainian power plants simultaneously: the Dobrotvir Thermal Power Plant in the Lviv Region, the Burshtyn Thermal Power Plant and the Kalush Combined Heat and Power Plant in the Ivano-Frankivsk Region, and the Ladyzhyn Thermal Power Plant in the Vinnytsia Region. That assault involved 653 drones and 52 missiles.