Infrastructure Rather Than Territory: Russia’s next winter campaign against Ukraine’s energy sector appears to pose a greater threat than Russia’s summer offensive

While the Russia-Ukraine war has largely reached a stalemate ‘on the ground’, with Russian forces having brought only around 1.5% of Ukrainian territory under their control over the past two and a half years, a mutual war of attrition is unfolding across several theatres of operations and is having an ever-greater impact on the dynamics of the conflict. This contest is inflicting increasingly significant psychological and economic damage on both sides of the front line.

Ukraine is effectively ‘wearing down’ the Russian army, launching successful attacks on Russian oil and refining infrastructure, thereby triggering an increasingly visible fuel crisis. It has also brought the land corridor linking Russia and Crimea under sustained fire, thereby disrupting the peninsula’s tourist season. However, the damage inflicted in these areas remains less severe than the impact of Russian strikes on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.

Last winter, Russia stepped up both the intensity of its attacks and devised a new, effective strategy that left much of Ukraine and many of its major cities facing the prospect of severe energy shortages and winter hardship. Even if Russia were to manage, to some extent, to break the deadlock on the front line, any territorial gains achieved during the remaining months of the current campaign would be unlikely to alter the tactical balance in a meaningful way. Against this backdrop, a renewed autumn-winter campaign targeting Ukraine’s energy infrastructure appears a more serious threat than developments along the front line itself.

Ukraine and its allies have only a matter of months left to prevent or mitigate this threat. Kyiv is attempting to expand its energy import capacity and, crucially, to innovatively transform the architecture of its energy system, reducing its vulnerability by transitioning to a decentralised ‘energy honeycomb’ structure and establishing an expanded network of energy storage facilities.

Another critical challenge for the Ukrainian economy is the growing disconnect between the energy infrastructure on the right bank, where electricity is generated, and the left bank, where much of it is consumed. Ukraine’s partners have substantially increased contributions to the dedicated energy support fund, but available resources remain at least half of what is required

One of the most effective ways of countering the threat would be to strengthen Ukraine’s air defence capabilities through additional missile supplies. However, such an outcome appears unlikely. Another option would be to increase the striking power of Ukraine’s air force through the provision of more capable long-range weapons.

More broadly, with the development of drone warfare, infrastructure is gradually becoming an even more important theatre of war than the traditional theatre of a ground offensive. Adapting to this reality has become an urgent strategic necessity.

The war of attrition and its fronts

The Russia-Ukraine standoff, which has reached a tactical impasse, is increasingly giving way to a mutual war of attrition unfolding across several theatres of operations. While the front line has barely shifted, with Russia gaining just over 1.5% of Ukraine’s territory over the past two and a half years, both sides are stepping up their efforts to inflict both humanitarian and economic damage on one another. Moreover, the increasing scale and effectiveness of drone use are making this war ever more costly for both countries.

On the principal battlefield, along the line of contact between the forces, a war of attrition is unfolding, with Russian ‘manpower’ being ‘ground down’ against the echeloned lines of Ukraine’s drone defences. As a result, Russian casualties are estimated at more than a thousand men a day, or around 200 men per square kilometre of territorial gains (→ Re: Russia: Offensive Lockdown). The current focus of the offensive is currently concentrated on Kostiantynivka, where, accordingly, the Russian army is now suffering its heaviest losses. However, even if the town is captured, this will not lead to any fundamental changes in the tactical situation, according to experts at the US Institute for the Study of War (ISW). Russia’s broader objective of reaching the borders of the Donetsk region will remain unattainable both this year and, in all likelihood, next year.

A further theatre of conflict has emerged in Ukraine’s aerial campaign against Russian oil and refining infrastructure. The most visible consequence of this has been a sharp decline in Russian oil refining, as well as a probable reduction in production, and a fuel crisis spreading across Russia. According to OPEC and the International Energy Agency, in recent months Russia has consistently failed to utilise 6–7% of its production quota under the OPEC+ framework. According to calculations by the outlet ‘7×7’, as of 10 June, reports of petrol shortages and restrictions had already been recorded in 25 regions across the country. At the same time, farms have complained of a sharp rise in prices and a shortage of diesel fuel during the peak of the busy farming season, writes Russian Forbes. And, according to data from Vedomosti, in regions where the harvest has already begun, fuel prices have risen by 40-100%, rendering agricultural operations unprofitable.

As Re:Russia predicted back in mid-May, the land corridor to Crimea has become an additional, local theatre in the war of attrition in recent weeks. Ukrainian drone control over the corridor’s transport routes has accelerated fuel shortages and, as a consequence, disrupted the tourist season on the Russian-occupied peninsula. According to Russian tour operators, up to 80% of previously booked reservations are now being cancelled, while investments made ahead of the season are failing to generate returns. This is likely to have serious consequences for the regional economy, which remains heavily dependent on tourism demand.

However, the mounting damage inflicted in these areas appears, for the time being, to be less than that caused by Russia’s principal effort to economically and psychologically exhaust Ukraine: its campaign against Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. As we have previously noted, the foundation of Russia’s success lies in the combination of drone and ballistic missile strikes, an area in which Russia enjoys a clear advantage (→ Re:Russia: Missile Imbalance). Furthermore, last winter Russia also developed a notably more effective operational approach and will almost certainly seek to build on that success during the coming winter season. In a war of attrition, the ability to exploit a temporary advantage in one domain can prove decisive. Ukraine and its partners therefore have only a matter of months in which to prepare for a renewed Russian offensive along this front.

1,225 strikes: the scale of the problem

In 2025, the Russian army carried out 1,225 strikes on Ukrainian energy infrastructure, according to estimates by experts at Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (ACLED), exceeding the cumulative number of such attacks recorded during the first three years of the war. The majority of these took place during the final four months of the year. The World Bank estimates the total cost of restoring Ukraine’s energy sector at approximately $90 billion.

Ukraine’s total electricity generation capacity has declined by more than fourfold since the beginning of the war, falling from 38 GW at the time of the invasion to just 9 GW in March 2026, according to data from the Green Deal Ukraïna project. Capacity had already halved by the end of 2022 due to the occupation of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant and several thermal power stations (→ Re: Russia: Missiles, Not Manpower). Subsequent Russian attacks reduced available generating capacity to 12 GW by 2024, according to experts from the Kyiv School of Economics in a recent review of the energy sector. By the start of the 2025/2026 winter season, Ukraine succeeded in restoring part of the damaged infrastructure and increased available generation to 17.6 GW. However, intensive Russian strikes in January and February caused capacity to fall once again below 10 GW, while electricity demand exceeded 18 GW during periods of severe frost.

During the 2025/2026 heating season, Russian forces succeeded for the first time in significantly disrupting district heating systems in major cities, including Odesa and Kharkiv, notes Sławomir Matuszak, an expert at the Centre for Eastern Studies (OSW). Conditions in Kyiv were particularly severe. Following the complete destruction of the Darnytsia Combined Heat and Power (CHP) Plant and substantial damage to the capital’s major CHP plants 5 and 6, the city experienced regular power outages. For several consecutive days, approximately 6,000 apartment buildings were left without heating, affecting around two million residents. During periods of extreme cold, temperatures inside Kyiv apartments reportedly fell to as low as 12°C.

The Russian army achieved the devastating results of its winter missile and drone campaign by refining its strike tactics, writes Ukrainian Review. Unmanned aerial systems were employed on a large scale for the first time to destroy regional electricity distribution substations, while thermal generation facilities became the targets of systematic attacks in Kyiv, Chernihiv, Sumy and Odesa. The strikes were directed not only at power generation but also deliberately targeted the distribution infrastructure (→ Re: Russia: Missile Imbalance). Russia also employed a ‘scorched earth’ tactic, maintaining round-the-clock shelling of a single substation for several days in a row, followed by repeated strikes as soon as repair work began (Ukraine is employing a similar tactic against Russian oil refineries). As a result, power cuts have become a necessary and almost constant tool for forcibly stabilising the grid voltage, as explained by the Ukrainian Ministry of Energy in January, at the height of the mass blackouts. Outages occurred when transmission lines and substations were destroyed through deliberate attacks while, simultaneously, falling temperatures drove electricity demand higher amid a severe shortage of available generation capacity.

The damage inflicted during the winter and not subsequently repaired continues to leave Ukraine’s energy system vulnerable even during the summer months. For instance, a massive missile and drone strike on 2 June caused power cuts for consumers in Kyiv and a number of other regions. As summer temperatures rise, the system will face a capacity shortfall due to cooling requirements, warns the analytical firm DiХi Group, as cited by Reuters.

Imports, power stations, storage facilities

Ukraine has partially offset its electricity shortfall through imports from neighbouring EU member states and Moldova. According to data from the Ukrainian regulator for energy and utilities (NEURC), electricity imports during the 2025/26 heating season more than tripled, rising from 415,000 MWh in November 2025 to a record 1.3 million MWh in February 2026. Hungary accounted for nearly 50% of imports at the February peak, followed by Romania, Slovakia and Poland. According to Sławomir Matuszak of OSW, imports covered approximately 20% of Ukraine’s total electricity consumption during the winter months. Import volumes began to decline gradually from March onwards, while restrictions on electricity supplies to households, businesses and industrial consumers were lifted only in May, notes the DiXi Group.

However, import capacity cannot be expanded dramatically in the short term: the nominal capacity for Ukraine and Moldova stands at 2.45 GW, of which Kyiv accounts for around 2.1 GW, according to DiXi Group’s calculations. Over the next two years, Ukraine’s Ministry of Energy plans to increase this capacity by a further 1.5 GW through the construction of new interconnections with Romania, Poland and Slovakia. While this would significantly improve system flexibility, most of the additional capacity will come online only after the coming winter.

To improve resilience during the next heating season, Ukraine intends to redesign the architecture of its electricity system around a decentralised model of an ‘energy honeycomb’ structure. The objective is to ensure that damage to any single element has a more limited impact on the wider network, while preserving the system’s ability to mobilise and centralise resources when required. The planned structure consists of four levels. The national level will comprise a resilient backbone network with high-voltage transmission lines and large-scale generating facilities. At the regional level, each oblast will develop its own energy resilience plan, including balancing capacity and reserve resources. The local level will focus on providing energy autonomy for hospitals, water utilities, schools and other critical facilities. Finally, individual households and businesses are expected to participate in generation, storage, balancing and the supply of electricity back into the grid. The operation of these ‘energy hives’ is intended to be coordinated through a digital management platform.

The restoration of destroyed power generation facilities is complicated by the fact that a significant proportion of the damaged equipment is not mass-produced, says Roman Nitsovych, Research Director at DiXi Group. Turbines, transformers and other critical components are manufactured on a bespoke basis, and production and delivery can take months or even years. In some cases, constructing an entirely new generating unit may be less costly than restoring a destroyed one. Experts from the European-Ukrainian platform Build Ukraine Back Better insist that Ukraine needs to focus on decentralising its power capacity through the construction of thousands of small distributed generation facilities, rather than restoring the giant Soviet-era thermal power stations. DiXi Group also recommends reducing dependence on centralised generation by supplementing it with distributed capacity dedicated to critical loads.

The Ukrainian government has designated energy storage systems as part of the country’s critical infrastructure and granted them priority protection status. Installed storage capacity currently exceeds 500 MW, while approved projects would increase total capacity to approximately 1.5 GW. In May, Kyiv commissioned a diesel-powered energy complex with a capacity of more than 5 MW to provide backup electricity for critical infrastructure facilities.

The decisive battle on the energy front

The most challenging task, however, is balancing power generation capacity between the two banks of the Dnipro. Energy Minister Denys Shmyhal has described the coming winter as a decisive battle, during which ‘the Russians will try to cut us off from nuclear power generation’. The challenge stems from the geography of Ukraine’s electricity system. Three nuclear power plants located in western and central Ukraine, Rivne (2.8 GW), Khmelnytskyi (2 GW) and South Ukraine (3 GW), account for roughly half of the country’s electricity generation. At the same time, a substantial share of Ukraine’s industrial base, and therefore much of its electricity demand, is concentrated on the left bank of the Dnipro. The transfer of power between these zones depends on high-voltage transmission lines that Russian forces have repeatedly sought to destroy.

Shmyhal has stated that the government’s objective is to make the left bank largely energy self-sufficient in order to minimise the need for large-scale electricity transfers between regions. To that end, plans have been approved for the construction of new generating facilities with a combined capacity of 1.4 GW. However, the minister acknowledges that this will not be sufficient to meet demand during peak periods. Distributed gas-fired generation capacity could serve as another tool for balancing the Ukrainian power system. However, since the start of the war, this capacity has been drastically reduced.

According to Ivan Herasymovych, head of Enwell Energy, his company’s gas production has fallen from more than one million cubic metres per day before the invasion to just 60,000 cubic metres today. Moreover, the remaining production facilities themselves have become targets of Russian air strikes. At the same time, gas imports have become significantly more expensive following the crisis in the Strait of Hormuz.

According to Shmyhal’s estimates, Kyiv requires around €5.4 billion to prepare its energy sector for winter; however, as of June, the total contributions to the International Fund for Energy Support to Ukraine had reached only around €1.93 billion. Although this is two and a half times the level recorded at the end of 2024, it remains at least two times below estimated requirements. Of this total, €197 million has been earmarked for the creation of a strategic reserve of energy equipment to support repairs to damaged infrastructure next winter.

Air-defence systems nevertheless remain the primary means of protecting energy infrastructure from Russian attack. Despite the high cost of Patriot missiles, such expenditures appear justified when weighed against the scale of potential damage to both infrastructure and the broader economy. Missile shortages have become a chronic problem, while the conflict involving Iran has further depleted available stocks in the United States and elsewhere. Replenishing domestic inventories has consequently become a priority for the Pentagon. In June, Ukraine conducted tests of its own FP-7 missile, which is being considered as an alternative to the Patriot. A turning point in the air war could be achieved if Ukraine were to possess its own arsenal of ballistic missiles, which would enable it to inflict symmetrical damage. Perhaps Volodymyr Zelensky may have alluded to possible advances in this area when, at the G7 summit, he remarked that not only Ukraine but Russia as well now faced the prospect of a ‘terrible winter’. For the time being, however, Kyiv continues to rely heavily on improvised protective measures, including reinforced concrete shelters constructed around most major substations. As Shmyhal claims, these structures are capable of withstanding strikes from up to 20 Shahed drones as well as several missiles.

At present, Ukraine clearly lacks sufficient defences for the impending energy battle. This shortfall poses one of its most significant vulnerabilities and appears almost as significant as the task of holding the front line throughout the summer and autumn. It is no coincidence that at hearings before the US Congress in early June, Secretary of State Marco Rubio argued that Russia is incapable of achieving its objectives in Ukraine by military means, whilst also warning that Ukraine’s energy capabilities remain one of the key causes of concern for America as another winter approaches.