Russia and Ukraine Target Each Other’s Energy Grids Ahead of Winter

What Happened?

Despite a beginning of the year month long agreement by Russia and Ukraine not to target each other’s energy grids, both sides have resumed and intensified attacks on energy targets. During the past week, Ukrainian drones and special forces have targeted several Russian energy facilities, including oil refineries. Russian drones have also ramped up attacks on Ukraine’s energy grid, targeting power stations across the country.

‘Every day they target our facilities, the question is what facilities and the extent of the damage,’ said Maxim Timchenko, CEO of DTEK, Ukraine’s largest private energy company.

Why it Matters

With winter approaching for both Ukraine and Russia, targeting energy facilities and power grids is a way to try to make the respective civilian populations of each country feel the impact of the war. Since both Ukraine and Russia are located in northern latitudes, winters can be long, cold, and harsh. Destroying or even damaging energy grids can mean lost power for civilians, which in turn can mean facing life-threatening cold conditions for prolonged periods of time.

According to the Washington Post, Ukrainian drones attacked the Gazprom Neftekhim Salavat oil refinery and petrochemical plant in Bashkortostan, which is in central Russia. The same day, Ukraine’s special forces said they hit one of the country’s largest refineries in Volgograd in southern Russia, halting work.

Russia has continued to mount ever larger drone attacks on Ukraine, with some recent attacks believed to have employed over eight hundred drones in a single strike on Kyiv. Many of these attacks have targeted Ukraine’s electrical and power grid to destroy it before the onset of winter. Ukrainian officials have said they have sufficient gas reserves to make it through the winter, but if the winter is unusually harsh, those supplies might not be enough. 

In response to the intensifying attacks, Ukrainian President Zelenskyy has called on Europe and the United States to impose tougher sanctions on Russia. U.S. President Donald Trump has said he supports tougher sanctions on Russia, but thus far, no new actions have been taken by the Trump Administration to back up those statements. It’s not clear that tougher sanctions would have any impact on Russia, which has mostly ignored previous sanctions. 

Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko posted on X yesterday, ‘We will rebuild what has been destroyed. But the lives lost cannot be restored. Russia continues to terrorize and murder our people every single day.’

How it Affects You

The growing frequency and intensity of attacks between Russia and Ukraine suggest the war shows no signs of slowing down despite repeated diplomatic efforts to bring hostilities to an end. Recent incursions by Russian drones into Polish and Romanian airspace highlight the potential of the conflict to spread as the war drags on.