Let There Be Light – How Ukrainians Survived Russia’s Blitzfreeze
Moscow tried to destroy Ukraine’s energy sector and freeze the population into submission during the coldest winter in memory. Kyiv Post examines how Ukrainians rebuilt their power grid to survive.
Kyiv Post
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After the fourth winter of the full-scale war, Ukraine’s energy system is emerging from one of the most difficult periods in its history.
From December 2025 to March 2026, Ukrainians endured 12 major attacks and hundreds of smaller ones that did not stop for a single day, involving more than 5,000 Shahed-type drones, around 150 ballistic missiles, and hundreds of cruise missiles. But Ukraine’s energy sector held out, and now Ukrainian homes have electricity almost 24/7.
Russian strikes during the winter of 2025-26 were the heaviest of the entire war.
Russians combined strikes with missiles, drones and artillery. As a prelude to these attacks, they often utilized missiles of different types, from different directions simultaneously, in order to exhaust or bypass Ukraine’s air defense system and inflict critical damage specifically on Ukraine’s energy system. The Russian Ministry of Defense did not shy away from strikes on civilian objects and even created a special “counter” on its website showing the percentage of Ukrainian energy infrastructure hit.
This plan failed. But the damage was done – damage that will last for years.
As of the end of winter 2026, the electricity deficit in the system amounted to 5-6 gigawatts, which is more than 25% of what Ukraine had as of autumn 2025.
According to data provided to Kyiv Post by DTEK Group, the largest private energy company responsible for electricity throughout Ukraine, of their eight large combined heat and power plants that generated thousands of megawatts of electricity, three ended up under occupation, while the other five suffered missile and drone strikes.
Overall, there was not a single energy facility in Ukraine that had not been hit by Russian strikes, according to authorities. Apart from power plants, DTEK notes that more than 9,000 power lines with a total length of 30,000 kilometers were also damaged or destroyed by the attacks.
Meanwhile, on Russian television, these deliberate strikes were openly justified by the goal of inflicting maximum suffering on Ukraine’s civilian population – an aim dictated by Russia’s inability to make any significant gains on the battlefield.
The result had serious humanitarian consequences. In some districts of Kyiv and the Kyiv region, heating and electricity were absent for several days; other districts received electricity only two to six hours per day.
With the destruction of CHP (combined heat and power) plants, not only electricity, but heating also disappeared. The hardest hit was the Kyiv district of Troieshchyna, where nearly 300,000 people live. The neighborhood lost heating for an entire month (mid-January to mid-February), when temperatures in Ukraine dropped to minus-15 degrees Celsius (5 degrees Fahrenheit) – the coldest winter of the 21st century.
Yet for the whole second week of March there have been no outages in the capital and surrounding regions. The weather has grown warmer, with daytime temperatures reaching 12 degrees Celsius (54 degrees Fahrenheit), and some residents have even started turning off the heating.
The energy system deficit has dropped from 5-6 gigawatts to 1, which currently leads to outages of up to 4 hours per day. However, these outages are not critical and do not seriously affect the lives of residents.
Electric public transport, which did not operate in winter, has returned to service in Kyiv and other large cities.
According to DTEK Group, 97% of the damage has either been repaired or is under repair, and up to 4,000 employees are involved in repair work. Similarly, thousands of workers are mobilized for repairs by Centrenergo, Kyivenergo, and other companies responsible for the condition of utility networks.
Russia systematically attacked power plants, substations, and transmission networks, trying to leave the country without light and heat. Yet despite significant destruction, the energy system held: most households once again received stable electricity supply, and energy workers are gradually restoring capacity.
How have Ukrainians managed to restore their energy system so quickly?
As of the end of the 2025-26 heating season, Ukraine’s energy sector remains damaged but functional.
The first factor was that the Russians failed to inflict truly critical damage on Ukrainian power plants; after each strike, repair crews quickly got to work and restored part of the capacity to working condition.
Repair campaigns became one of the key factors in stabilizing the system. Energy workers essentially created a new model of operation:
rapid emergency repairs after attacks;
use of equipment from other power plants;
search for transformers and turbines across Europe;
maximum mobilization of repair crews.
This work made it possible to return part of the thermal generation that had been considered lost a year ago.
In addition, protection of energy facilities also played a role. Although it was not perfect and its construction was linked to the largest corruption scandal of Zelensky’s presidency, it nevertheless played its part, according to energy workers.
Energy companies and experts note that thermal generation suffered the most. Russia is especially interested in depriving civilians of heat, according to Kyiv Post sources.
“Thermal generation also produces heat, and the task of causing maximum suffering to civilians by destroying heating systems is one of the goals of these strikes,” one energy sector executive told Kyiv Post. “Moreover, thermal generation is flexible. Whereas nuclear power plants produce a stable amount of electricity, thermal plants can produce more or less depending on peak demand or declines. So, by targeting thermal generation, one can ‘shake’ the stability of the energy system.”
According to estimates by international institutions and industry experts, more than 80% of thermal generation capacity was destroyed, damaged, or temporarily unavailable due to hostilities and occupation.
Despite the large-scale destruction, energy workers managed to restore a significant portion of the damaged equipment. Restoration was carried out literally under fire, and often within record timeframes.
Energy companies say that full restoration of only part of the destroyed facilities requires investments that would allow about 4,000 MW of generating capacity to be returned to the system.
Another factor of stability remains nuclear power plants, which provide the majority of the system’s base load. Thermal generation now plays a balancing role, while hydroelectric power plants help cover peak loads.
Back in autumn 2024, former Minister of Housing and Utilities Oleksiy Kucherenko, answering a question from Kyiv Post about what the survival of Ukraine’s energy system depends on, said: “on whether Russia dares to strike nuclear facilities.”
Russia did not dare to strike directly at nuclear power plants (which currently generate more than 50% of Ukraine’s electricity), although the main strikes targeted electricity transmission substations from western Ukraine, where the largest nuclear power plants are currently located, and Kyiv. In particular, several dozen missiles were aimed at a substation in the settlement of Nalyvaikivka, 40 kilometers (25 miles) west of Kyiv.
At the same time, distributed generation has been actively developing over the past two years. According to energy companies, in 2025 alone more than 5,000 new green and small-scale generation facilities were connected to the grid, which is twice as many as the year before.
An example of how this is done was demonstrated in Zhytomyr. Similar measures were taken by Chernihiv, Kharkiv, Poltava, and other cities. These are not only mini-CHPs fueled by pellets and sorted waste. Mostly, these are solar power plants, small cogeneration units, and private energy systems of enterprises. In some places, they even went as far as reactivating old boiler houses from the 1930s-50s.
Such a diversified model makes the energy system more resilient to attacks.
Currently, solar generation, which was considered “small-scale,” occupies an important place in the energy system – with spring and warming, household consumption decreases, while daylight hours and solar intensity increase. Under these conditions, solar power plants reach the required capacity.
Finally, the fourth factor is electricity imports from Europe, which have not stopped and which Russia also failed to disrupt, even though some missile strikes tar.
It is notable that one of the largest exporters of electricity to Ukraine was and remains Hungary – which is one of Ukraine’s biggest opponents on its path to the EU, as well as in the implementation of sanctions against Russia. Hungary accounts for more than 40% of all Ukrainian imports.
The integration of Ukraine’s energy system with the European one was introduced back in spring 2022 and supplemented by the construction of new transmission lines in subsequent years to ensure the stability of electricity imports.
What’s next?
All interviewed officials and energy workers are convinced: Russian shelling of Ukraine’s energy system will continue.
“Energy is the blood of the country. It is industry, people’s well-being, and mobility. It is a node whose destruction can help the enemy solve several tasks; so we expect the resumption of strikes,” says one official.
The first signals of a possible shift in strike priorities appeared back in February, when in addition to power plants, railway infrastructure also came under attack. Ukraine has one of the densest railway networks in Eastern Europe, and in wartime the railway solves many tasks at once.
In frontline regions, trains and, most importantly, locomotives of the state operator Ukrzaliznytsia are already the target of drone strikes; and arson attacks on railway relay cabinets by agents and saboteurs occur regularly in different regions.
Strikes on “old” targets, such as power plants, are also expected – but with a change in tactics. Still, everyone agrees that with warmer weather and longer daylight hours, it will be much easier for Ukrainians to endure any energy crisis – especially considering what they lived through this winter.
