Russia has begun its campaign against Ukraine's energy system months earlier than in either of the past two winters. The Kremlin wants to get the jump on Bankova and make sure it finishes a job left half undone last year: destroy what remains of Ukraine’s power generation capacity and infrastructure well before the repairs crews can even get to work.

Last year Russia ramped up its power strikes in September. This year the new campaign started at the end of July and is now starting to gather momentum. The difference this time round is Ukraine intends to give as good as it gets.

Naftogaz, the national gas company, said on August 17 that its facilities had taken 13 Russian strikes in the past week alone, with serious damage to equipment and production capacity across several regions and one asset hit repeatedly. The state energy group has now been attacked nearly 300 times since the start of 2026. No staff were killed, the company said.

The Institute for the Study of War puts a date on what is coming. Russia intends a major strike campaign against energy infrastructure in Kyiv itself ahead of Ukraine's Independence Day on August 24. The German government just issued a travel warning: it told its citizens not to travel in Ukraine before or during Independence Day.

Russia is going early deliberately, hitting in August rather than waiting for the bitter cold to start in January that disrupts Ukraine's repair season. The plan appears to be to bash the grid before the 2026-27 winter and leave it in worse shape for when the mercury plunges.

This is the energy front of the wider tit-for-tat war on each other's civilian economy that opened on July 18, when a warehouse war started and Ukrainian drones killed seven at a Wildberries warehouse in Tambov. Russia answered with the largest bombardment of the war the very next day. It has all escalated rapidly from there. Warehouses and petrol stations were the opening exchange. Generation, gas production and refining are the real targets. Russians and Ukrainians can live without widgets and petrol for a while, but they can’t live without power, heat and water.

Three weeks earlier than last year

The comparison is straightforward. In 2025 Zelenskiy warned that Russia was stepping up strikes on the energy system on September 9, and Kyiv lost its power and water in a large-scale strike on October 10. This year the equivalent warning is mid-August with a named target date of August 24. That is roughly three to four weeks earlier.

As IntelliNews reported, around 80% of Ukraine's power generation was damaged or destroyed over the winter of 2025-26, leaving a six-gigawatt shortfall and a repair bill estimated at $64bn-70bn. The grid held through the harshest winter of the war, but only just, and the recovery since has been the quiet achievement of the year: on August 5 Ukraine became a net electricity exporter for the first time since September 2025. It managed that for less than a fortnight before the strikes resumed.

Kyiv is spending against the clock. Engineering protection of the capital's infrastructure is about 60% complete and repairs 65%, with 65 MW of cogeneration and 16 MW of diesel generation already deployed and Mayor Vitaliy Klitschko targeting 200 MW of cogeneration by the end of the year. The optimised cost of the city's 2026 resilience plan is UAH37bn ($897mn). Nationally the energy ministry is still €650mn ($750mn) short for the winter.

Ukraine cannot intercept what is coming

But the missile war is working against Kyiv. Ukraine has received three times fewer anti-ballistic interceptors than it was at the start of 2026, on ISW's assessment, and now has run out of Patriot interceptor ammo completely. That means it cannot shoot down Russia's ballistic missiles at all. Russia has timed its scaled up barrage against the energy assets to that gap, not the weather.

Ukraine's energy minister Denys Shmyhal put it bluntly in an August 3 interview with Politico: “Putin wants to finish off our energy system and derail our economy and weapons production. He also hopes in winter our society will break from exhaustion, and pressure leadership to sign the surrender.”

He described the two countries as locked in a battle to smash each other's energy systems and going into the fight Russia clearly has the upper hand. Unlike Ukraine’s dwindling stockpile of missile ammo, Russia has doubled its missile production capacity and has been stockpiling both missiles and drones – particularly its new jet powered Geran-4 and Geran-5 drones – ahead of the winter’s campaign.

In the missile arms race, Russia is far out ahead with a wide variety of powerful cruise, ballistic and hypersonic missiles. That’s what makes the dearth of interceptor missiles so painful, as the only effective counter to the Russian onslaughts. Ukraine has a license to make a home grown PAC-2 and PAC-3 version of the patriot ammo, but the first prototypes are not exacted to appear until next year at the earliest.

But in the drones arms race Russia has also recently taken the clear lead with its new classes of Geran drones as well as the cruise missile-lite Banderol missiles which have been used to devastating effect against the port of Odesa and brought Ukraine’s grain exports to a halt.

For its part, Ukraine is rushing the development of its new FP-7 and FP-9 missiles, the latter being Ukraine’s first homegrown true-ballistic missile, but these “may” appear towards the end of the year. Neither are in serial production yet. Ukraine’s famous Flamingo cruise missiles are in production and making their debut on the battlefield to good effect. But they still suffer from a lack of accuracy and slow speeds making Russian counter measures relatively effective. However, Russia lacks sufficient AWAC radar coverage, especially after Operation Spiderweb last summer that destroyed several of these irreplaceable planes.

Drones are not missiles, and they are working anyway

Ukraine has adopted Russia’s strategy but with a fraction of the firepower. However, as IntelliNews reported, Russia is so vast that Ukraine doesn’t need to match Russia kilo to kilo of high explosive to have a devastating effect on the Russian economy.

Ukraine has no missile force capable of levelling a power station, and its drones cannot destroy a refinery outright. What it has instead is reach and accuracy, and it has spent them on the one part of the Russian energy system that cannot be repaired under sanctions.

Shmyhal's own claim is that the drone campaign has knocked out about 40% of Russia's primary refining capacity. The supporting record is not in doubt: Ukraine hit Russian oil assets at least 30 times in July, the highest monthly total of the campaign, including five refinery strikes in four days, and at least 24 of Russia's 34 largest refineries have now been hit. A new jet-powered stealth drone reached a Bashkortostan refinery 1,700km from the border. Strikes have also landed on refineries in Krasnodar Krai and Samara Oblast and on a shadow-fleet tanker off Gelendzhik.

The effects show up where Russians live. Petrol rationing has returned across at least 18 regions, station availability fell from 44% to 34% in a week, the refinery subsidy bill hit RUB192.8bn ($2.3bn) in July alone, and crude exports have slid to their lowest since May as damaged refineries and ports back up. An earlier easing in the fuel queues lasted about a fortnight before the strikes resumed - the mirror image of Ukraine's fortnight as an electricity exporter.

Two different kinds of damage

The two campaigns are not symmetrical and are not meant to be. Ukraine went into the war with around 55GW of generation capacity which was reduced to 14GW by the end of last winter’s Russian bombing campaign. Since then another 2GW has been knocked out, according to Shmyhal. The talk by Klitschko and others of adding a few hundred megawatts of capacity doesn’t put a dent in the some 5-6GW generation deficit already in place that is likely to almost double once Russia’s winter campaign really gets going.

Ukraine’s stratgy so far is still mainly focused on its limited stock of missiles to attack Russia’s oil refineries because of the economic war impact which has effectively been push up an already swollen Russsian budget deficit. However, Bankova, Ukraine’s presidential administration, has started to switch to hitting power stations, mostly in the Crimea, for the political effect it has on demoralising the popualtion. A recent poll by the independent pollster, the Levada Centre, found 70% of Russians now say the situation at home is “tense.”

Russia, for its part, is playing the long game. It is attacking generation and gas production with missiles Ukraine increasingly cannot intercept, and the intended casualty is civilian endurance through a winter. Previously when interceptors were copious pre-Iran war, Kyivians became inured to the drone and missile attacks on the capital, confident the air defence system was more than adequate to keep their safe. Since July tens of thousands of residents have been spending the night sleeping on camping mats in the deep tunnels of Kyiv’s ornate metro.

The blackouts have already started and the weather is still hot. Both sides have already put civilians in the dark, and the sharper of the two effects so far is Ukraine's effort to blacken Russian cities – especially in occupied Crimea.

In Ukraine, the outages are mostly in the frontline regions:

·       a power line hit at Zaporizhzhia on August 3 left 45,000 customers without electricity, the day after an attack there killed one person and wounded 31;

·       a strike on power facilities in Dnipropetrovska oblast cut supply to 126,000 households;

·       Sumy was hit on August 1 and again on August 4, the second attack causing a "large-scale" power outage;

·       a strike on industrial plant and critical infrastructure near Poltava on August 2 caused a chemical leak and disrupted both electricity and gas supplies, after the oblast was attacked every day from July 30;

·       Chernihiv and its surrounding area were hit on August 1 and 3, and Kharkiv had energy, transport or industrial damage reported every day from July 31 to August 3;

·       more than 200 petrol stations have been destroyed in the frontline regions since the strikes began, at least 80 of them in Kharkiv oblast, on local reports cited by the Financial Times on July 31.

In Russia and occupied Crimea, the pattern is the same and, on the peninsula, further advanced:

·       Ukrainian drones began on Crimea's fuel infrastructure in spring 2026 — tankers, storage depots, inbound fuel trucks — then moved to substations and power lines, Meduza reported on July 22; Sevastopol was rationing petrol by coupon from late May and widespread outages began in mid-June;

·       Sergey Aksyonov, Russia's installed head of the peninsula, said some communities had gone nearly two weeks without power, with districts running rolling blackouts on a three-hours-on, three-hours-off schedule; card payments stopped working, food spoiled, and water, sewerage and mobile service began failing, with some cell towers switched to generators;

·       Ukraine struck a Crimean generating station on July 14 and reported hitting 14 energy facilities in three days to July 27, after which the Russian-installed operator Krymenergo confirmed restrictions across the peninsula and a "difficult" situation in the northwest, east and south, the Kyiv Independent reported on July 28;

·       Crimean electricity consumption fell 42% year on year over the first 20 days of July and 28% against the first 20 days of June, on wholesale-market administrator data analysed by The Bell;

·       hundreds of thousands were facing days-long blackouts and water cuts by late July, on reporting by the Washington Post, Meduza, the New York Times and Mediazona;

·       in Udmurtia, Governor Alexander Brechalov called the July 27 strikes around Izhevsk the region's most severe attack in recent times, part of what Zelenskiy calls Kyiv's "long-range sanctions" campaign.

Ukraine has produced in Crimea, with drones, the precise effect Russia is trying to produce in Ukraine with missiles: a civilian population without light, water or working payment systems for weeks at a time. Inside Ukraine itself the outages are so far regional and measured in tens of thousands of customers, not the nationwide grid collapse of last winter — the regions left in shadow are the frontline oblasts. That is what the campaign starting before the repairs finish is designed to change.

The Battle of Britain-like conflict to come will no longer be about the effectiveness of the defences, but simply which population can endure more destruction.

Ukraine is attacking refining and export infrastructure with drones that cannot flatten a plant, and the intended casualty is the fuel supply, the budget and the war economy behind them.

Both are working, and neither is decisive on the current trajectory. Russia can still fire more warheads than Ukraine can stop; Ukraine can still reach further into Russia than Russia can defend. The Orenburg region will go into winter with no refining capacity of its own after a six-month outage at Orsk. Kyiv may go into winter with a generation deficit it has not finished repairing from the last one. Each side is now betting that the other's civilians break first.

FACT-CHECK NOTE: THE 13-STRIKES-IN-A-WEEK AND NEARLY-300-IN-2026 FIGURES ARE NAFTOGAZ'S OWN, REPORTED AUGUST 17 VIA AP/WSLS. NO INDEPENDENT VERIFICATION AND NO ASSET NAMES OR REGIONS WERE GIVEN BY THE COMPANY. NAFTOGAZ IS GAS PRODUCTION, NOT THE ELECTRICITY GRID - THE COPY IS WRITTEN TO KEEP THAT DISTINCTION.

THE AUGUST 24 KYIV GRID CAMPAIGN, THE THREE-TIMES-FEWER INTERCEPTOR FIGURE, THE 80%-OF-GENERATION AND SIX-GIGAWATT AND $64BN-70BN NUMBERS AND THE KRASNODAR/SAMARA/GELENDZHIK STRIKES ALL COME FROM ISW'S AUGUST 8 RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT. ISW IS A SINGLE SOURCE FOR ALL OF THEM AND THE STRIKE CAMPAIGN IS A STATED INTENTION, NOT AN ACCOMPLISHED FACT. IF AUGUST 24 PASSES WITHOUT IT, THIS PARAGRAPH NEEDS REWRITING.

THE 40%-OF-RUSSIAN-REFINING FIGURE IS UKRAINIAN ENERGY MINISTER DENYS SHMYHAL'S CLAIM TO POLITICO ON AUGUST 3, NOT AN INDEPENDENT ESTIMATE. OUR OWN REPORTING HAS CARRIED A RANGE OF 30% OF ACTUAL AND 45% OF NOMINAL CAPACITY ON A FINANCIAL TIMES ANALYSIS. THE CLAIM IS ATTRIBUTED IN THE COPY RATHER THAN STATED.

POLITICO ORIGINATED THE SHMYHAL INTERVIEW AND THE QUOTE IS CARRIED VIA OUR OWN AUGUST 5 STORY, WHICH IS LINKED. THE POLITICO ORIGINAL WAS NOT FETCHED AND IS NAMED UNLINKED.

THE 18-REGION RATIONING COUNT AND THE 44%-TO-34% AVAILABILITY FALL ARE CARRIED FROM OUR OWN SECOND-FUEL-CRISIS ANALYSIS, SOURCED THERE TO THE BELL'S AUGUST 13 DIGEST AND GDEBENZ. THAT PIECE IS NOT YET IN THE ARCHIVE SO IT IS NOT LINKED HERE - ADD THE LINK ONCE IT IS LIVE.

BEN'S FRAMING WAS THAT RUSSIA HAS STARTED EARLY AND IS ESCALATING. THE ARCHIVE AND ISW SUPPORT THAT FOR THE GRID CAMPAIGN. ONE QUALIFICATION IS WRITTEN IN: THE NEARLY-300 NAFTOGAZ ATTACKS SINCE JANUARY MEAN THE ASSAULT ON UKRAINIAN ENERGY NEVER ACTUALLY STOPPED THIS YEAR, SO WHAT IS NEW IN AUGUST IS CONCENTRATION AND TIMING RATHER THAN A CAMPAIGN BEGINNING FROM NOTHING.

NO PIECE IN OUR ARCHIVE ALREADY INVENTORIES BOTH SIDES' ENERGY STRIKES SINCE JULY 18. THE NEAREST ARE THE OPERATION WILDBERRIES REFN (CIVILIAN ECONOMY BROADLY), THE SECOND-FUEL-CRISIS ANALYSIS (RUSSIAN REFINING ONLY) AND THE MARCH HARSHEST-WINTER PIECE (RETROSPECTIVE). THIS IS NEW GROUND.

A SUBSTATION AND TRANSMISSION-LINE TALLY FOR UKRAINE COULD NOT BE BUILT - NEITHER OUR ARCHIVE NOR THE OPEN SOURCES CHECKED GIVE A NAMED-ASSET LIST FOR 2026. UKRENERGO AND DTEK HAVE NOT PUBLISHED ONE. IF YOU WANT THE ASSET-BY-ASSET INVENTORY, IT NEEDS A DIRECT APPROACH TO UKRENERGO OR DTEK PRESS OFFICES.