Since the summer, Kyiv has changed tactics. Given the almost complete failure of Western oil sanctions to curb Russian oil exports, the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) has increasingly been targeting one of the main sources of Russia’s export revenues: Russian refineries. Russia has retaliated with a devastating campaign to take out more of Ukraine’s heating and power facilities that threatens to plunge the country into darkness just as the heating season gets underway.

According to various estimates, Ukraine’s campaign targeting Russian oil refineries have reduced production by 10%-30% and is impacting the budget, where the estimates for the full year budget deficit has more than tripled since the start of the year.

However, Russia’s retaliatory campaign has seen gas production fall by some 60%, according to comments by Naftogaz last week, and ten regions out of a total of 24 are already suffering from blackouts or have been put on emergency power supply regimes, according to Ukrenergo.

Ukraine was already short of gas supplies to get through the winter, with some 11bcm of gas in storage against the 13bcm it needs to heat and light the country until March. Ukraine produces some 20bcm of gas domestically each year and will be forced to import the rest. However, with German gas tanks only 75% full – by far the largest in Europe after Ukraine’s – ahead of an EU November 1 deadline to have 90%, the rest of Europe is also short of gas as the mercury starts to fall.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy's trip to Washington was important where he asked US President Donald Trump for the powerful long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles, but was refused. Kyrylo Budanov, Ukraine’s spy master and chief of the Main Directorate of Intelligence of the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine said last week that 99% of the strikes on Russian refineries were carried out by Ukrainian drones, but as Russian refineries were hard-topped during the Cold War, the damage drones can do is limited. US-made Tomahawks, on the other hand, are powerful enough to flatten a refinery. Bankova also wants to hit other military strategic facilities inside Russia such as their drone factories.

Tensions rising in Bankova

Tensions are rising amongst Ukraine’s top officials as they struggle to cope with the Russian drone and missile barrage on their energy facilities.

Zelenskiy convened a tense meeting with the leadership of his Office, the Foreign Ministry, the Defence Ministry and other key departments on 10 October to dig into the details of the energy sector. That same day, the Russians struck two thermal power plants in Kyiv leaving half the city without electricity and water. The previous meeting on October 6 had ended in a tense discussion, with raised voices, Ukrainska Pravda reports.

“At some point, Zelenskiy, in a righteous fury, resorts to shouting to compel officials to speak plainly, stop repeating empty phrases and stop passing the buck,” Ukrainska Pravda reported. The president demanded to know which energy facilities are properly protected, which need to be shut down to prevent the country from plunging into darkness and which are at risk of failing entirely.

When he asked, "who's to blame for such a large part of the network being so poorly secured?", ministers and heads of relevant state agencies usually have no answer other than: "our predecessors,” Ukrainska Pravda reports, adding that it is taking longer to complete new protective measures than their "predecessors" took to build them. The central issue is the problem of protecting gas production, massive heat and power generation facilities or gas storage sites.

The situation is becoming dire. According to Naftogaz Group, Ukraine's largest national oil and gas company, Russia has launched three major strikes on Ukraine's gas facilities over the past week and the city of Kyiv and nine other oblasts are already experiencing rolling power outages.

“The next heating season could, under certain scenarios, prove more difficult and problematic than the winter of 2022-2023, when Ukraine endured dozens of heavy strikes, nationwide power outages and simultaneous power cuts that left over 10mn people without electricity,” Ukrainska Pravda reports. “Sources in the energy sector told Ukrainska Pravda that the nature of recent strikes and the scale of the damage show the Russians are this time prepared to act even more cynically.”

Russia has also changed its tactics. Whereas in 2023-24, it relied on carpet bombing multiple sites across the country – most notably Sumy and Chernihiv oblasts – this year Russia is more specifically methodically trying to destroy the energy system and gas targets and has expanded its target zone to include Odesa, Mykolaiv and Dnipropetrovsk oblasts. Local generation, Ukrenergo transmission lines and substations, and even distribution within large cities via oblast operator substations.

Another change is that instead of sending one large wave of drones and missiles, now Russia is striking in series, sending a few drones every hour to prevent repairs. Drone strikes to deplete air defence measures are followed by heavy missile attacks on generation facilities.

“The Russians' overarching aim remains unchanged: to destabilise the system and trigger a cascading failure – a blackout,” Ukrainska Pravda reports. “The intention is to create a deficit in Ukraine's east – historically the region with higher consumption and where almost all local generation has been damaged – and to gradually paralyse the west‑to‑east flow of electricity… Experience from recent years shows that in one or two attacks the Russians can knock out more generation than Ukraine can restore over an entire summer.”

Bankova is now anticipating strikes on dispatchable generation in Ukraine's western thermal power plants, followed by attacks on the distribution equipment of nuclear power plants. The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant (ZNPP), the largest in Europe, has already been taken offline due to missile strikes on its power feeds.

Building defences

Under former commander in chief General Valerii Zaluzhnyi, a three-tier defence was built up:

• Installing sand-filled gabions around facilities;
• Building concrete and metal structures to shield large transformers at key substations; and
• Entire substations were sealed within reinforced concrete and steel topped with a layer of earth.

In total, around 80 key transformer substations, that form the energy backbone for the country, need protection to ensure the stability of the entire power system. In the first pass some 20 of these substations were fully protected, but the work has not been finished. Russia has at the same time increased its production of drones and missiles as part of its missile war to the point where it can still overwhelm Ukraine’s defences.

The work got bogged down in accusation of corruption: then Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal asked why the second-level protective structures built by the Agency for Restoration cost two to three times more than similar facilities built by Ukrenergo. This dispute led to endless meetings, arguments, funding delays, missed deadlines and other internal system failures, Ukrainska Pravda reports.

"This winter will certainly be one of shortages. Emergency outages are already in effect across almost the whole country. Most likely, in winter we will face a '4×2' scenario: four hours without power, two hours with it," a representative of one state energy company told the newswire.

Zelenskiy has constantly been calling for more air defence ammo and systems to protect Ukraine’s power supplies. When 30 to 50 Russian drones and missiles target a single facility, even the best defence won’t intercept them all. “It only takes one precise strike to disable a power unit at a plant. In the case of substations, the damage can be repaired technically within two or three weeks, but that means little if there is no generation," the state energy company official said.

Another new tactic is Russia is now also targeting Ukraine's gas infrastructure – the extraction facilities, underground storage compressors and regional distribution networks. The idea is to also cut off the fuel supplies used by the power plants.

"This is no longer a war of weapons – it is a war of engineers. On both sides, energy experts are monitoring strikes, calculating megawatts and reserves. Some are building, others destroying. The front line now cuts not only through trenches but also through control rooms," another company representative told Ukrainska Pravda.