Missiles, Not Manpower: Kyiv's lack of long-range missiles remains the main factor in Russia's advantage in the war and reduces the Kremlin's incentives to conclude a peace agreement

Despite certain tactical successes, Russia’s ground offensive by the end of 2025 will not amount to a major breakthrough and does not indicate a significant shift in the balance of forces in the Russia–Ukraine war. Russia’s territorial gains are unlikely to exceed last year’s by any substantial margin, and the complete seizure of northern Donbas would require at least another year of combat operations.

By contrast, Russia’s campaign against Ukraine’s energy infrastructure appears far more effective and damaging. The sector has been subjected to sustained large-scale attacks for more than three months. According to analysis by Re:Russia, each of the 19 large-scale Russian strikes carried out since early September involved on average around 500 drones and 35 missiles.

Ukrainian regions are now living under conditions of chronic electricity shortages, which became particularly acute in December. Major cities, including Kyiv, Odesa, Mykolaiv and others, have been without power for half a day or more at a time. At present, the most serious risk is a complete breakdown in the connectivity of the energy system, which could lead to a collapse of the energy sector in eastern Ukraine.

The capacity to restore damaged infrastructure, as well as to increase electricity imports, remains highly limited. Even strengthening Ukraine’s air defences through the delivery of additional systems would have only a constrained effect, given the sheer number of drones involved in the attacks.

Volodymyr Zelensky’s proposal for an energy ceasefire in early December was predictably rejected by Moscow. Russia’s possession of long-range missiles, and Ukraine’s lack of them, currently constitutes Moscow’s main advantage in this war of attrition, arguably even more important than the disparity in manpower. As long as Ukraine lacks a sufficient missile arsenal to inflict symmetrical damage on Russian infrastructure, Putin is unlikely to rush towards a ceasefire agreement.

The direction of the main strike

The Russian grouping, which according to claims by both sides numbers up to 700,000 troops, continues the large-scale offensive against Ukrainian positions in northern Donetsk oblast that began in October. Some analysts argue that the pace of Russian advances has increased slightly over the past two weeks, and Ukrainian officials have confirmed the final loss of Siversk. However, even taking these gains into account, the offensive does not demonstrate significant tactical breakthroughs that would clearly indicate a shift in the balance of forces along the front line. As a result, the territory brought under Russian control by the end of 2025 is unlikely to exceed 5,000 sq km, leaving it broadly comparable to last year’s figures. In practical terms, this means that Russia would require at least one more year of offensive operations, after the two years already expended, to seize the remaining part of Donetsk oblast.

While the balance of forces along the front line has not fundamentally changed, a different offensive now poses a far greater threat to Ukraine’s stability. This is the sustained mass bombardment of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, which has been ongoing for more than three consecutive months (→ Re:Russia: Missile Imbalance). Since early September, Russia has carried out an average of five large-scale missile and drone attacks on Ukraine per month. The attack on the night of 23 December, involving 635 drones and 38 missiles, was the third such strike in December and the 19th since early September. On average, each of these attacks has involved around 500 drones and 35 ballistic and cruise missiles, with ballistic missiles accounting for roughly 25% to 33% of launches in each strike.

Russian large-scale attacks involving drones and missiles since the beginning of September 2025

Almost every such combined Russian strike resulted in large-scale power outages. After the strikes on 25 November, for example, emergency power cuts were introduced on Kyiv’s left bank, while following the attack on 29 November more than 500,000 residents of the capital were left without electricity, according to the Ukrainian Ministry of Energy. The attack on 6 December caused power outages in Odesa, Chernihiv, Kyiv, Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk and Mykolaiv regions. Following the strike on 13 December, more than 1 million consumers were left without power, according to the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs. As Volodymyr Zelensky stated, as of 15 December there was not a single 'operational' power plant left in the country that had not been damaged by Russian strikes.

These attacks have already pushed Ukraine’s power system to the brink of collapse and threaten a complete loss of electricity supply, especially in the east of the country. Their objective is to destroy the transmission system that delivers electricity from western regions, where most of Ukraine’s power is currently generated, to the eastern regions. This assessment is confirmed by analysts and Kyiv officials familiar with the situation, cited by The Washington Post. 'If we are not on the brink, then we are very close' to a total power outage in the east, one source said.

The scale and geography of the shortage

Ukraine is currently living with a chronic and acute electricity shortage, which not only weakens the country’s economic and defence potential but has also become a new systemic cost for the population. To ration electricity consumption, a system of ‘queues’ of rolling outages was developed as early as the summer of 2024. All consumers not classified as critical infrastructure were divided into six queues or groups. Depending on the intensity and destructiveness of Russian strikes, regional energy companies determine how many queues will be disconnected over the next 24 hours. This makes it possible to balance consumption and avoid large-scale accidents.

As sources in Kyiv told Re:Russia, most of the time the authorities manage to activate no more than four outage queues simultaneously in the city. On 20 December, for example, between two and four queues were in effect in Kyiv, depending on the district. Outages also affect central areas, as can be verified via the DTEK website. For example, at 2 Bankova Street, where the Ukrainian president’s office is located at number 11 on the same street, four outage queues were in effect on 20 December. As a result, electricity was available there for a total of eight hours per day, from 08:00 to 11:30, from 18:30 to 22:00, and from 00:00 to 01:00.

The situation with outages depends to a large extent on geographical proximity to the front line. The most favourable conditions are in the western regions, including Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk, Ternopil, Volyn, Rivne, Chernivtsi, Khmelnytskyi and Zakarpattia. The most difficult situation is in frontline regions, namely Chernihiv, Sumy, Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhzhia, as well as in Odesa region, according to Ukrenergo head Vitalii Zaichenko in late November.

For example, according to the outage schedule for 5 December, a relatively calm day following a night when Ukraine was attacked by only 137 drones without missile support, outages in Kyiv lasted up to six hours, with consumers from two groups out of six affected simultaneously. In Volyn, Ivano-Frankivsk and Lviv regions, power cuts did not exceed 3.5 hours, affecting all groups at different times, while in Zakarpattia they did not exceed four hours. At the same time, in Zaporizhzhia region, outages on 5 December reached 10.5 hours, and at certain times four groups were without power simultaneously. In Dnipropetrovsk region outages lasted 8.5 hours, with up to five groups affected at once, and in Odesa region eight hours, with three groups affected simultaneously.

In less than a month, the situation with electricity availability deteriorated dramatically across the country. Mykolaiv was left completely without electricity on the night of 20 December. On 22 December, outages in parts of Kyiv reached 11 hours, with two queues simultaneously active. In the Zaporizhzhia region outages reached 15 hours, and for short periods around midnight none of the groups had electricity at all. In Dnipropetrovsk region, outages reached 11 hours, with up to four groups affected.

By the end of December, the most severe situation had developed in Odesa region, which has recently suffered several powerful strikes on energy and civilian infrastructure. Particularly destructive was the combined missile and drone attack on the night of 13 December, after which tens of thousands of consumers in Odesa, Chernihiv, Kherson, Dnipropetrovsk, Kirovohrad and Mykolaiv regions were left without power. Four Ukrenergo substations were damaged, leaving 560,000 consumers without electricity, equivalent to 60% of the region’s population. DTEK had hoped to restore supply by no later than 16 December, but this proved impossible. After more than 50,000 consumers remained without power for three consecutive days, a state of emergency was declared in the region.

According to local media, by mid-December Russian strikes had already damaged 20 substations in the Odesa region. In Odesa itself, five to six outage queues are in effect on a permanent basis, which in practice is equivalent to a blackout. Electricity is unavailable for most of the day even in central districts. According to the Odesa DTEK website, at 1 Prymorskyi Boulevard electricity on 20 December was available only from midnight to 02:30, from 09:30 to 13:00, and from 20:00 to 23:30. The most difficult situation has developed in the town of Artsyz in Odesa region, which following the strikes on the night of 13 December will remain without power supply until at least 26 December.

Can the collapse of Ukraine's energy sector be stopped?

Russia’s combined attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure have been a key element of the war of attrition since the start of the full-scale invasion. As we have previously noted, Ukraine’s total electricity generation capacity at that time stood at 38 GW, but by the end of 2022 it had been halved, primarily as a result of the occupation of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant and several thermal power stations. By the start of the current heating season, according to Ukraine’s Ministry of Energy, electricity generation amounted to 17.6 GW, more than twice below the pre-war level (→ Re:Russia: Missile Imbalance).

Ukraine’s capacity to restore, repair and replace lost generation remains limited. Throughout December, the government revised consumption and electricity import quotas several times. On 6 December, it instructed regional military administrations to reduce the list of critical infrastructure facilities. Local authorities, in turn, were required to cut electricity consumption through savings measures, including the suspension of additional lighting for buildings, streets and parks, decorative lighting, and outdoor advertising. Since then, the list of critical infrastructure facilities has been revised at least twice more, on 16 December, when the exclusions freed up at least 800 MW of capacity, and again on 21 December, resulting in savings of up to 1 GW.

Electricity imports increased by 15% in November to 415,000 MWh, according to the DixiGroup analytical centre. In October, imports had risen by 50% compared with the previous month. As a result, between September and November electricity imports increased almost threefold overall, and were 1.5 times higher than in November last year. Around 45% of imports were supplied by Hungary, a further 20% by Slovakia, with the remainder coming from Romania, Poland and Moldova. Peak import volumes typically occurred in the days following large-scale attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. In November, electricity exports were also completely halted.

Ukraine is technically able to increase electricity imports from Europe even further. Under an agreement with ENTSO-E, the European network of electricity transmission system operators, the maximum cross-border transmission capacity was increased to 2.3 GW in December, according to Ukrenergo chief executive Vitalii Zaichenko. However, Kyiv cannot fully utilise these opportunities in practice. Imports alleviate electricity shortages in western Ukraine, but transmission to central and eastern regions remains constrained.

The EU is supplying Ukraine not only with electricity, but also with generation equipment. On 22 December, Ukraine’s Ministry of Energy announced the completion of a major logistics operation lasting 11 months, under which the European Commission transferred to Kyiv a full set of equipment from a Lithuanian thermal power plant. The transfer involved 149 shipments with a total weight of 2,399 tonnes, including extremely heavy transformers and stators weighing around 172 tonnes each. Since February 2022, 9,500 generators and 7,200 transformers have been delivered to Ukraine under the EU Civil Protection Mechanism. However, these supplies are insufficient to offset the losses caused by Russian strikes.

The current Russian offensive against Ukraine’s energy sector appears particularly well prepared, both in terms of strike strategy and, above all, the accumulated stockpile of drones and missiles, especially ballistic missiles, which can be intercepted only by scarce Patriot interceptor missiles. Even if Ukraine possessed a much larger air defence arsenal, this would be unlikely to fundamentally alter the situation. The sheer number of drones involved overwhelms any air defence system and makes repelling such attacks prohibitively expensive and relatively ineffective.

In practice, the only adequate means of protecting Ukrainian infrastructure would be for Ukraine to possess its own long-range missiles capable of inflicting comparable damage on Russian infrastructure through retaliatory missile and drone strikes. The social and political consequences for the Kremlin of such damage would be substantial, as they would sharply increase the costs of the war for the Russian population, among whom it is already unpopular. The issue of supplying Ukraine with long-range missiles has been debated since at least 2023. President Donald Trump raised this possibility several times this autumn, and the Pentagon has confirmed that it has sufficient stocks and could supply missiles without jeopardising US security. Opinion polls in the United States indicate that around two thirds of Americans support the transfer of Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine (→ Re:Russia: America does not trust Putin and Trump). Analysis of Russian attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure suggests that achieving parity in the energy war would require an arsenal of around 100 to 150 missiles per month.

On 9 December, Volodymyr Zelensky stated that Ukraine was ready for an energy ceasefire, but Russia, as expected, rejected the proposal. Kyiv’s lack of long-range missiles creates a clear imbalance in the effectiveness of mutual air strikes and currently constitutes one of the Kremlin’s most significant advantages in the war against Ukraine, arguably even more important at this stage than the disparity in manpower along the front line.