Just ahead of winter, Russia has greatly intensified its assault on Ukraine’s energy sector, with a particular and novel focus on the country’s supply of natural gas. The Russian offensive, which exploded this month with a scale and intensity not seen in nearly four previous years of war, appears to be a bid to leave Ukraine, especially the eastern bits, in the dark and in the cold.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha pleaded last week for additional European support for the country’s battered power plants and power lines to avoid a humanitarian crisis; EU foreign affairs chief Kaja Kallas pledged this month to work on providing another 100 million euros ($117 million) in energy assistance to help Ukraine survive the next few months. Kyiv’s conversation about military support has shifted from a demand for U.S.-made Tomahawk missiles to a request for additional Patriot air-defense batteries.
Russia has launched seven major waves of massed drone and missile strikes on Ukrainian energy infrastructure this month alone, with the latest coming overnight from Monday into Tuesday. Especially hard hit, and repeatedly, are eastern cities including Sumy, Chernihiv, Kharkiv, and Poltava; Kyiv, too, suffers repeated attacks, but those are directed at energy infrastructure less than they are at residences.
Going after energy is not a new tactic for Russia: It has been trying to disable Ukraine’s electricity system, with mixed success, since the start of the war. But this autumn offensive is new and different in two ways. The scale of the Russian aerial onslaught is vastly greater than what came before: Drone swarms of 600 or 700 machines overwhelm air defenses and can deliver concentrated blows against formerly resilient parts of the energy system, whether those are generators or transformers. Second, Russia is, for the first time in such a major way, trying to knock out Ukraine’s natural-gas production, storage, and distribution capabilities—not just electricity.
Ukraine may have lost as much as one-third of its natural gas production capabilities already and is facing the prospect of greatly increased (and expensive) additional imports of natural gas from Europe if it is to keep the heating on and the population safe from severe suffering this winter.
“Russia has been amending their tactics from the beginning. The difference we see now—earlier, it was electricity. Now, in October, they actually attack everything—electricity, natural gas, fuel depots. We need gas and electricity,” said Andrian Prokip, an energy expert at the Wilson Center’s Kennan Institute office in Kyiv.
There is some debate over the strategic rationale behind Russia’s latest onslaught. It could be part of a calibrated escalation of the ongoing attacks on Ukraine’s energy system, meant to undermine the will and morale of the Ukrainian population.
“They want to be sure we are frozen, push the people to pressure the government,” Prokip said. “They consider this to be the last attempt, the last resort, and they want to use all means.”
But there is also an element in the timing of the Russian escalation: It comes on the heels of Ukraine’s own greatly intensified assaults with drones and missiles against far-flung Russian oil facilities, especially refineries and fuel depots. That campaign has led to longer lines to purchase gasoline in many parts of Russia and has dented the country’s ability to export refined petroleum products, putting more pressure on an energy cash cow that is now facing even greater Western sanctions.
“There is a degree of tit for tat. The refinery attacks have had a serious effect, and [Ukraine] is stepping it up,” said Emily Ferris, an expert in Russian and Eurasian security at the Royal United Services Institute in London. The Russian aerial offensive could also be a way to affect dynamics in Washington, she suggested, with U.S. President Donald Trump constantly wavering between pressuring Ukraine and acting tough on Moscow, depending on the ebb and flow of the fighting.
The first problem for Ukraine is that there is no easy way to enhance the air defenses that would be needed to protect all the power plants, substations, transformers, natural gas storage, and gas fields themselves. Air defense missiles are expensive and ineffective against overwhelming swarms; artificial intelligence-enhanced Russian drones can also evade jamming measures and attack from angles that make interception more difficult. Even so, Germany has promised that more U.S.-made Patriot air defense batteries are on the way.
“It’s hard to see what level of air defense we could need. It’s hard to deal with 500 to 800 drones at a time,” Prokip said.
The other problem is that the scaled-up Russian energy assault is insidiously doing what Moscow has been trying to do overtly for years and even decades: sunder the eastern part of Ukraine from the western parts. Most of the recent Russian attacks have been concentrated in a handful of cities in northeastern and eastern Ukraine, with additional efforts to sever the transmission lines from the less-scorched west that could have helped ameliorate power shortages.
“On the eastern bank of the Dnipro, a lot of generation capacity was destroyed,” Prokip said, highlighting two major attacks in October. While power generation is less affected in Kyiv and farther west, there is increasingly little way to physically knit the two halves of the country together and prevent blackouts.
“We just cannot transmit the capacity,” he added.
Some in Ukraine suggest escalating in turn, bringing the energy war home to the civilian Russian population in a way that Kyiv really hasn’t yet, gas lines notwithstanding. For all the reach and potency of the Ukrainian attacks on Russian oil, they have targeted the financial and military aspects of the Russian energy complex rather than seeking to keep civilians in the dark or cold.
The best defense may be a good offense, but such escalation risks being counterproductive at a strategic level, Ferris said.
“If that escalates in that way, Ukraine would lose the moral high ground, and civilian casualties would just play into Russia’s hands,” she said. “I think escalation like that would make it much more difficult to come to the table, and would really risk Trump showing sympathy with the Russian position.”
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