On October 10, 2022, Russian missiles struck critical power substations in Ukraine, cutting the lights in major cities across the country. Such attacks, once viewed as improbable and contrary to Putin’s goal of occupation or regime change, have become routine for millions of Ukrainians.

This attack marked the beginning of a new era of the war in Ukraine. While it began with volleys of missiles falling on civilian areas, the summer primarily saw conflict outside major urban centers, with both sides focusing on controlling territory. With successful Ukrainian military offensives and the bombing of the Kerch bridge in Crimea, pressure mounted in Russia for retaliatory action. The Kremlin responded by targeting critical civilian infrastructure.

Ukraine’s power grid is uniquely susceptible to these attacks. Ben Cahill, a senior fellow with the Energy Security and Climate Change Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), noted that Russia “knew the most vulnerable parts of the Ukrainian energy system and attacked those mercilessly.” Russia was aware of these weaknesses because of a fatal historical quirk: they were built by the USSR, and Russia has assisted in their maintenance for decades.

The composition of Ukraine’s energy grid only exacerbated this vulnerability.

In 2017, four nuclear power plants provided just under 25 percent of the nation’s energy. Ukraine’s dependence on a handful of power plants made it straightforward for Russia to target critical power infrastructure through missile and drone strikes, according to Allegra Dawes, a research associate at CSIS’s Energy Security and Climate Change Program.

Ukraine had reason to expect that Russia might target its power system. Max Bergmann, the director of the Eurasia Program at CSIS, notes that "there’s been a lot of precedent, at least in terms of Russia’s hybrid capabilities over the last 20 years, where Russia has targeted civilian infrastructure, often through cyber means, through attacking power grids."

A Russian hacking group called Sandworm first came to global attention when it attacked a Ukrainian media company in 2015. These attacks escalated at the end of that year when Sandwormtargeted the Prykarpattyaoblenergo power company, which caused widespread blackouts in Eastern Ukraine. 

In Syria, the Kremlin expanded the scope and intensity of its attacks on civilian infrastructure, using artillery to attack schools, hospitals, power plants, and other non-military facilities in 2019. As a result of these hyper-visible attacks, and increasing Russian aggression with the annexation of Crimea, Ukraine began to evaluate the weaknesses in its own infrastructure systems. 

Ukraine’s power grid, which was largely constructed during the Soviet era, was directly connected to a larger grid that included Russia and Belarus. As security concerns grew about an increasingly belligerent Russia, Ukraine drafted plans to develop a more independent grid in 2013. While the initial pace of separation had been slow, mounting threats intensified the pace at which the Ukrainian government worked to secure its grid. 

On the eve of Russia’s invasion, Ukraine had planned to disconnect from Russia’s grid for 72 hours. This was meant to be a brief test run before reconnecting to Russian power, as Ukraine’s grid did not have the capacity to run independently for long. The reconnection never happened; four hours after the supply of power was cut off, Russian tanks began rolling over the border.

Since the first days of the war, Russian forces have targeted Ukrainian energy infrastructure. But in the initial phase of the conflict, Russia sought to control, not destroy, Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, as Russia presumed it would be quickly victorious and occupy the country. On March 4, 2022, it captured the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, the largest nuclear facility in Europe. With a single battle, it had eliminated nearly 10.7 percent of Ukraine’s total energy production.

A few weeks later, Russia tried connecting Zaporizhzhia to their own country’s grid. Its engineers, however, struggled to divert the power. Although they were familiar with the Soviet systems, they could not bypass the Western safety technology that Ukraine had installed over the previous few decades. By the time the engineers coerced Ukrainian workers to explain the system, Ukrainian forces had blown up a crucial substation in Crimea, sinking the plan entirely.

Despite the trouble at Zaporizhzhia, Russian forces planned to capture other plants. In July, they took the coal-fueled Vuhlehirsk plant, Ukraine’s second-largest energy facility. Although Ukraine reclaimed large chunks of territory in early autumn, Vuhlehirsk still sits in Russian-controlled territory.

Because of Russian energy terrorism, Ukrainians suffer from a perpetual energy shortage. According to Dawes, Ukraine’s grid operator uses rolling outages to protect the country’s intact facilities, disrupting the lives of millions of civilians. Although the country has benefited from a mild winter, many have struggled to stay warm. 

Vulnerable Ukrainians suffer the most from these outages. Without electricity, hospitals cannot help the injured and elderly citizens who most need their services. In Kyiv, many patients suffered organ damage when their oxygen concentrators lost power. One resident recalled watching her mother, a 75-year-old cancer patient, struggling to catch her breath for hours. 

Ukraine has tried to patch the holes in its grid. Replacement parts are not widely available, so engineers have improvised with imperfect parts, Cahill said. The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has provided backup generators and kits with parts from U.S. utility companies—they are imperfect fits, but they help in the short term. In Kyiv, Ukrainians have set up “points of invincibility,” stations where neighbors can warm up and charge their electronics. They run on generators and are therefore not subject to rolling blackouts.

So far, Ukraine has done its best to keep energy flowing to its citizens. When the war ends, it will need to rethink and redesign how its energy infrastructure functions.

Even if the war ends with Ukraine still independent and intact—an outcome that is far from certain—Ukraine faces a herculean task in rebuilding its energy infrastructure. It must not only rebuild what has been destroyed but also strive to create a new grid that is more resilient to future threats.

From the threat of Russian cyberattacks to climate change-induced stress on the grid, Ukraine will confront challenges that require it to build back better.

On July 4, 2022, Ukraine outlined an ambitious 10-year, comprehensive National Recovery Plan at the Ukraine Recovery Conference in Lugano, Switzerland.

Of the plan’s estimated $750 billion, roughly $130 billion (equivalent to 65 percent of Ukraine’s GDP in 2021) is earmarked for energy reconstruction and development.

Challenges to the Vision

The National Recovery Plan faces significant, but not insurmountable, headwinds in realizing its vision of an energy resilient Ukraine.

The biggest hurdle is funding.

While many development banks and institutions from around the world have expressed interest in investing, the National Recovery Plan acknowledges that Ukraine needs sustained private investment to support multiyear, capital-intensive public-private projects. 

Long term, the private sector’s willingness to invest the billions that the plan calls for rests on Ukraine’s ability to reform, weeding out longstanding corruption and inefficiencies in its energy sector and public sector that have previously deterred investment. The country must also cultivate a transparent market environment, creating an even playing field to facilitate external investment and domestic innovation in the energy sector. 

Bergmann notes how the policy reforms Ukraine can make to attract sustained investment in its energy sector work across purposes in its goal to become a “European country” and part of the European Union.  

He explains, “if you’re going to join the EU, you have to update all your laws—all your regulations. You have to get in line with European standards. You have to deal with corruption. You have to deal with a lack of transparency.”

Reforms in Ukraine will be necessary to unlock support from Europe. 

Ukraine's European Future?

The National Recovery Plan’s energy agenda positions Ukraine to become a sustainable energy exporter to Europe. 

This would complement the European Union’s decarbonization and energy security goals.

In this respect, the timing of the National Recovery Plan’s announcement was no coincidence, coming only a week after Ukraine officially acquired EU candidate status on June 23, 2022.

This is the latest reflection of Kiev’s continued shift to the West, which has included the ousting of Russian-backed former president Viktor Yanukovych and the subsequent signing of an EU Association Agreement back in 2014.

As Ukraine turns West, it must remain receptive to the change that will come as it forges its own path.

Authors

Special Thanks:

• The Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF)
• Professor Aaron Hanlon, Colby College
• CSIS iDeas Lab team mentors/staff: Mark Donaldson, Cera Baker, Michael Kohler, Jaehyun Han, and Sarah Grace
• CSIS AILA staff: Julieze Benjamin, Nina Tarr, Erin Delany, and Donatienne Ruy