As Winter Nears, Russian Strikes on Ukraine’s Energy Grid Cause Blackouts

Russia fired missiles and drones at power plants and electrical infrastructure throughout Ukraine on Friday, causing blackouts in Kyiv, the capital, and several other cities and continuing a yearslong effort to collapse Ukraine’s energy grid.

Every fall since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, Russian strikes have targeted electricity and central heating infrastructure before the onset of winter weather, as part of an effort to break Ukrainians’ will to continue their fight.

Ukraine has responded by beefing up air defenses, fortifying transformer stations with concrete barriers, diversifying energy sources with new wind and solar fields, and adding resilience to the grid with large backup batteries. Russia has adapted by honing its strategies to evade air defenses, sending combinations of drones and missiles in waves during attacks that last hours.

The barrage on Friday was the second large volley aimed at the electrical grid in a week.

Russia launched 450 drones and more than 30 missiles in the attack, which injured more than 20 people around Ukraine and killed a child in Zaporizhzhia, in the country’s south, President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a post on Telegram. The strike targeted infrastructure “that supports normal life, which Russians want to deprive us of,” he wrote.

Explosions and the rattle of air defense machine guns kept residents of Kyiv and other cities awake overnight. The energy minister, Svitlana Hrinchuk, wrote in a social media post that it was a “massive attack” on energy infrastructure.

Many of the districts in Kyiv on the eastern bank of the Dnipro River were without power on Friday morning, according to the city’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko. Waterworks were affected, with taps running dry in some neighborhoods.