Infrastructure instead of territory: a new season of Russian attacks on Ukrainian energy this coming winter looks like a bigger threat than Russia's summer offensive

While the Russian-Ukrainian war on the ground has reached a stalemate—in two and a half years, Russian troops have taken control of only about 1.5 percent of Ukraine—a mutual war of attrition is unfolding across multiple theaters of operations and is having an increasingly greater impact on the dynamics of the conflict, causing ever more significant psychological and economic damage on both sides of the front line.

Ukraine is effectively “grinding” the Russian army, effectively attacking Russian oil and oil refining infrastructure, provoking an increasingly visible fuel crisis, and has placed the land corridor connecting Russia and Crimea under fire control, thereby disrupting the holiday season on the peninsula. However, the damage in these areas so far appears to be less than that caused to Ukraine by Russian strikes on its energy infrastructure.

Last winter, Russia stepped up its attacks and found an effective new strategy that brought much of Ukraine and its major cities to the brink of freezing. If Russia suddenly manages to break the deadlock on the front line to some extent, its advances in the remaining months of the current campaign will not fundamentally change the tactical situation. Against this background, the new autumn-winter campaign of bombing of energy infrastructure now looks like a greater threat to Ukraine than certain events on the front line.

Ukraine and its allies have only a few months left to prevent or reduce the weight of this threat. Ukraine is trying to expand the possibilities of energy imports, and most importantly, to innovatively change the architecture of the energy system, reducing its vulnerability through the transition to a decentralized structure of “energy cells” and the creation of a network of electricity storage devices.

A critical challenge for the Ukrainian economy also appears to be a breakdown in the connection between the right bank (where electricity is produced) and the left bank (where it is consumed) energy infrastructure. Ukraine’s allies have seriously increased investments in a special fund to help its energy sector, but these funds are still at least half as much as needed.

The most important element in countering the threat could be increasing the capabilities of Ukrainian air defense through the supply of missiles. But this looks unlikely. Another possibility is to increase the striking power of the Ukrainian air force through longer-range weapons of greater power.

One way or another, with the development of drone armies, infrastructure is gradually becoming an even more important theater of military operations than the traditional theater of land offensive. And it’s worth adapting to this new reality as quickly as possible.

Mutual war of attrition and its fronts

The Russian-Ukrainian confrontation, which has reached a tactical impasse, is increasingly turning into a mutual war of attrition, which is unfolding in several theaters of military operations. While the front line remains virtually unchanged—Russia's territorial gains over the past two and a half years amount to just over 1.5% of Ukraine's territory—the sides are increasing their efforts to inflict both humanitarian and economic damage on each other. And the growing scale and effectiveness of the use of drones makes this war increasingly costly for both countries.

In the main theater – on the line of contact between troops – a war of attrition is unfolding in the format of “grinding” Russian “manpower” on the echeloned lines of Ukrainian drone defense. As a result, Russian casualties amount to more than a thousand people per day, or about 200 people per square kilometer (→ Re: Russia: Offensive lockdown ). The main offensive efforts are currently concentrated on Konstantinovka, where, accordingly, the Russian army is now suffering the main losses. However, even if the city is captured, this will not lead to fundamental changes in the tactical situation, experts from the American Institute for the Study of War (ISW) believe , and the Russian goal - reaching the borders of the Donetsk region - will remain unattainable either this year or, most likely, next year.

Ukraine's air war against Russian oil and refining infrastructure has turned into yet another theater of war. Its recognized consequence was a sharp reduction in Russian oil refining, as well as a likely reduction in its production (according to OPEC and the International Energy Agency, in recent months Russia has systematically failed to select 6-7% of its quota within OPEC+) and the fuel crisis spreading across Russia. According to calculations by the publication “7×7” as of June 10 , reports of problems with gasoline and restrictions are already coming from 25 regions of the country. At the same time, agricultural farms complain about a sharp rise in prices and a shortage of diesel fuel at the height of seasonal work, writes the Russian Forbes . And according to Vedomosti , in those regions where early harvesting began, fuel prices jumped by 40–100%, which makes the work of agricultural enterprises unprofitable.

An additional, local theater of war of attrition in recent weeks has become, as Re: Russia predicted back in mid-May , the land corridor to Crimea. The aerial control of Ukrainian drones over its transport routes is leading to a rapid increase in the fuel crisis and, as a result, disruption of the holiday season on the peninsula annexed by Russia. According to Russian tour operators , up to 80% of previously made reservations have been canceled here recently, and investments made on the eve of the season do not pay off. This, in turn, will have serious consequences for the region’s economy, the most important pillar of which is tourism demand.

However, the increasing damage in these areas appears to be less than what Russia is inflicting in the main direction of its war on the economic and psychological exhaustion of Ukraine - in the campaign against Ukrainian energy infrastructure. As we wrote earlier, the basis of Russian success is the combined strikes of drones and ballistic missiles, the presence of which provides Russia with an absolute advantage (→ Re: Russia: Missile imbalance ). In addition, last winter Russia discovered a new effective strategy here and, without a doubt, will try to build on its success in the next winter season. In a mutual war of attrition, maximizing temporary advantage in one area can be critical. Therefore, Ukraine and its allies have only a few months left to prepare for a new Russian offensive in this direction.

1225 strokes: the scale of the problem

In 2025, the Russian army carried out 1,225 attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure, according to Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (ACLED) experts , which exceeded the total number of such attacks in the first three years of the war. Most of them occurred in the last four months of the year. The World Bank estimates the total costs of restoring Ukrainian energy at $90 billion.

Ukraine's total electricity generation more than quadrupled during the war years: from 38 GW at the time of the invasion to 9 GW in March 2026, according to the Green Deal Ukraine project . Generation volumes were halved by the end of 2022 - due to the occupation of the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant and several thermal power plants (→ Re: Russia: Rockets, not people ), and in 2024, as a result of Russian attacks, generating capacity was reduced to 12 GW, experts from the Kiev School of Economics write in a recent review of the energy sector . By the beginning of the winter season of 2025/2026, Ukraine managed to restore part of the destroyed capacity and increase generation to 17.6 GW, but massive Russian attacks in January-February led to a drop in capacity below 10 GW, while the demand for energy during these months due to severe frosts exceeded 18 GW.

In the 2025/2026 heating season, for the first time, Russian troops managed to significantly disrupt the operation of centralized heating systems in large cities, including Odessa and Kharkov, notes Slawomir Matuszak, an expert at the Center for Eastern Studies (OSW) . An extremely acute situation also developed in Kyiv: as a result of the complete destruction of the Darnitskaya CHPP and significant damage to the capital’s large CHPPs No. 5 and No. 6, power outages regularly occurred in the city, which left about 6 thousand apartment buildings without heat supply for several days, affecting about 2 million residents. During periods of severe frost, the temperature in Kyiv apartments dropped to 12 °C.

The Russian army achieved the destructive results of the winter missile and drone campaign by improving strike tactics, writes Ukrainian Review : drones were used massively for the first time to destroy regional power distribution substations, and thermal generation facilities became targets of systematic attacks in Kiev, Chernigov, Sumy and Odessa. The strikes were aimed not only at generation, but also thoughtfully knocked out the distribution infrastructure (→ Re: Russia: Missile imbalance ). Russia also used “scorched earth” tactics - round-the-clock shelling of one substation for several days in a row and repeated strikes at the moment restoration work began (Ukraine adheres to similar tactics in relation to Russian refineries). As a result, power outages have become a forced and almost permanent tool for forced stabilization of voltage in the network, the Ukrainian Ministry of Energy explained in January at the height of mass shutdowns. Blackouts occur when power lines and substations are destroyed by targeted attacks while colder weather increases demand for electricity amid power shortages.

The damage caused in winter and not compensated makes the Ukrainian energy sector vulnerable even in the summer. Thus, a massive missile and drone strike on June 2 caused power outages for consumers in Kiev and a number of other regions. As summer temperatures rise, the system will face a capacity shortage due to cooling needs, warns the analytical DiXi Group, cited by Reuters .

Import, cells, drives

Ukraine partially compensates for its energy deficit by importing electricity from neighboring EU countries and Moldova. According to the Ukrainian regulator in the fields of energy and utilities (NKREKP) , import volumes during the 2025/2026 heating season increased more than threefold - from 415 thousand MWh in November 2025 to a record 1.3 million in February 2026. The main suppliers were Hungary (almost 50% of imports at the peak in February), Romania, Slovakia and Poland. Slawomir Matuszak of OSW estimates that during the winter months, imports covered approximately 20% of Ukraine's total consumption. Since March, imports began to gradually decline, while restrictions on the supply of electricity to households, enterprises or industrial consumers in Ukraine were lifted only in May, notes DiXi Group .

Imports, however, cannot be increased by multiples: its nominal capacity for Ukraine and Moldova is 2.45 GW, of which Kyiv accounts for about 2.1 GW, according to DiXi Group estimates. In the next two years, the Ministry of Energy of Ukraine plans to increase the nominal capacity by 1.5 GW through the construction of new interconnections with Romania, Poland and Slovakia. This will significantly increase maneuverability, but mostly beyond the limits of the coming winter.

To withstand the winter campaign, Ukraine plans to innovatively change the architecture of the energy system, moving to a decentralized structure of “energy cells”. As a result, the defeat of one of the elements will have less impact on the entire system, which at the same time will retain the ability to mobilize and centralize resources if necessary. Structurally, they intend to divide the Ukrainian energy sector into four levels: state (stable network with main lines and powerful generation units), regional (each region will have its own energy sustainability plan, including balancing capacities and reserves), local (hospitals, water utilities, schools, etc. will receive energy autonomy) and the level of households or individual enterprises (according to the plan, they will also produce, store, balance and supply energy to the network). It is planned to coordinate the work of the “energy cells” using a digital control system.

Restoring destroyed energy generation facilities is complicated by the fact that a significant part of the damaged equipment is not mass-produced, says DiXi Group Research Director Roman Nitsovich. Turbines, transformers and other critical components are custom-made and can take months or even years to produce and ship, so it can sometimes be cheaper to build a new power unit than to rebuild a destroyed one. Experts from the European-Ukrainian platform Build Ukraine Back Better insist that Ukraine needs to rely on decentralization of capacity—building thousands of small distributed generation facilities—rather than restoring giant Soviet-era thermal power plants. DiXi Group also recommends reducing dependence on centralized generation by supplementing it with distributed capacity for critical loads.

The Ukrainian government has included energy storage systems in the list of critical infrastructure sectors that should receive priority protection. Currently, the capacity of such installed systems exceeds 500 MW, and the issued permits assume an increase in their total capacity to 1.5 GW. In May, a diesel power complex with a capacity of more than 5 MW was put into operation in Kiev, intended for backup power supply of critical infrastructure facilities.

The Decisive Battle of the Energy Front

At the same time, the most difficult task is balancing energy capacities between the two banks of the Dnieper. Energy Minister Denis Shmygal called the coming winter a decisive battle, during which “the Russians will try to cut us off from nuclear generation.” The fact is that half of the country’s total electricity generation is provided by three nuclear power plants located on the right bank of Ukraine: Rivne (2.8 GW), Khmelnitsky (2 GW) and South Ukrainian (3 GW). While most of the country's industrial enterprises - the main consumers of electricity - are located on the left bank. The transfer of power occurs via high-voltage lines, which the Russian army is trying to destroy.

Shmygal said that the government is striving to make the left bank energy self-sufficient so as not to transfer large volumes of electricity between zones. For this purpose, it was decided to build new generation facilities with a total capacity of 1.4 GW. However, this volume will not be enough to cover needs during peak periods, the minister admits. Another tool for balancing the Ukrainian energy system could be distributed gas generation capacities. However, after the start of the war they decreased critically. According to the head of Enwell Energy, Ivan Gerasimovich , if before the Russian invasion his enterprises produced more than one million cubic meters of gas per day, now these volumes have decreased to 60 thousand. However, the remaining capacity is also the target of Russian air strikes. At the same time, gas imports became especially expensive after the crisis in the Strait of Hormuz began.

According to Shmygal , Kiev needs about €5.4 billion to prepare the energy sector for winter, however, as of June, the volume of contributions to the international Energy Support Fund for Ukraine reached only about €1.93 billion. This is two and a half times more than, for example, at the end of 2024, but at least two times less than necessary. Of this amount, €197 million will be used to create a strategic reserve of energy equipment to help repair damaged infrastructure next winter.

At the same time, the main means of defense against Russian attacks are still air defense systems. Even despite the high cost of Patriot missiles, in this case these costs seem justified in comparison with the amount of damage caused to both infrastructure and the economy as a whole. Missile shortages are chronic, and the war in Iran has led to a significant depletion of missile stocks in the United States and around the world. The Pentagon now intends to replenish its reserves first. In June, Ukraine tested its own FP-7 missile, which is seen as an alternative to the Patriot. The turning point in the war in the air could be provided by Ukraine's own arsenal of ballistic missiles, which would allow it to inflict symmetrical damage. Perhaps Vladimir Zelensky is hinting at some breakthroughs in this direction, when he stated at the G7 summit in Evian that not only Ukraine, but also Russia now faces a “terrible winter.” Однако пока Киеву приходится уповать на доморощенным средства защиты вроде бетонных саркофагов, которые Украина построила практически на всех подстанциях и которые, как утверждает Шмыгаль , способны выдерживать удары до 20 «шахедов» и нескольких ракет.

На данный момент средств защиты в предстоящей энергетической битве у Украины явно недостаточно, и это формирует для нее одну из центральных угроз, которая выглядит почти не менее значимой, чем задача удержания линии фронта на протяжении лета и осени. Не случайно на слушаниях в Конгрессе США в начале июня госсекретарь Марко Рубио утверждал, что Россия не способна добиться своих целей в Украине военным путем, и в то же время отметил, что «именно энергетические возможности Украины остаются одним из ключевых факторов риска, который продолжает вызывать беспокойство у американской стороны» по мере приближения новой зимы.