Dark times. Is Ukraine threatened with a new blackout and is the country ready for it

The first item on the agenda was an audit of agreements with partners for military assistance, in particular for energy protection.

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Among other things, the head of state wanted to find out, and this was not the first time at such meetings, who is responsible for what in the energy sector, which structure protects which objects, and how he, as the president, can help at his level. The previous such Bet on October 6 ended with a difficult conversation in raised tones.

The meeting on the 10th took place against the background of the Russians renewing massive shelling of the energy sector. Moreover, on that day the enemy attacked two Kyiv thermal power plants. And, unfortunately, quite successfully: half Kyiv was left without electricity and water.

Even in the government quarter, the water supply stopped, so the meeting participants could see from the OP window cisterns with technical waterwhich had to be fitted under the buildings of the authorities.

In such conversations with a diverse set of characters, the president always has one ending. The longer the meeting lasts, the less clear who is responsible for what and who will perform the tasks set at the previous meeting.

At some point, Zelensky, in righteous anger, simply turns to shouting in order to force officials to speak to the point, to stop repeating empty phrases and shifting responsibility.

Usually it requires quite simple things: to explain, for example, how many and which objects of the power grid are protected, and which should be closed so that the country does not plunge into darkness and did not drown in the remains of her own life.

In the question “who is to blame that a huge part of the network is covered anyway?” ministers and heads of relevant state bodies usually have no other answer than “predecessors”.

That’s only the same ex-vice prime minister Oleksandr Kubrakov, whose team started to erect protection for energy facilities, was released more than a year and a half ago. That is, the “new” officials in their positions have been building these shelters longer than their “predecessors” were building.

And you can try to show off the former, as some suggest at Stavka, but this will in no way solve the issue of the incompetence of the current ones.

As well as the issue of protection of gas production, giant facilities of heat and electricity generation or gas storages.

Meanwhile, Russia has its attacks only builds up According to Naftogaz, over the last week Russia struck massively three times on gas facilities of Ukraine. Kyiv and many oblasts are already in blackout mode.

“Ukrainian Pravda” found out whether the Ukrainian energy system will withstand Russian attacks, which scenarios should be prepared for, where problems with electricity will be guaranteed, and how Russia has changed its tactics to terrorize large cities.

The new phase of the energy war: what has changed in Russia The upcoming heating season may, under certain scenarios, turn out to be more difficult and problematic than the winter of 2022-2023, when Ukraine experienced dozens of mass attacks, a complete blackout, and a simultaneous blackout for more than 10 million people.

Interlocutors of the UP in the energy industry emphasize that the nature of the latest strikes and the scale of destruction show that this time Russia is determined to act even more cynically.

If in 2022–2023 the Russian Federation relied on “carpet bombing”, attacking various objects in different parts of the country with a large number of missiles and drones, now it is using the tactics of “staged bites”. The enemy is knocking out the energy industry of Ukraine region by region.

What does it look like in practice? First, local attacks on front-line and border regions. First of all, we are talking about Sumy region and Chernihiv region, which are currently suffering the most. Kharkiv Oblast, Odesa Oblast, Mykolaiv Oblast and Dnipropetrovsk Oblast are also shelled less intensively.

In all these regions, the enemy is trying to methodically destroy the entire energy system: both local generation and its delivery through large Ukrenergo substations, and even distribution in large cities through oblenergo substations.

In August – in September, this was done mainly by drones – as a rule, one object was attacked by ten UAVs, in some cases the number of drones could reach up to forty.

Another change – now the Russians do not strike in a big wave at once, as before, but in series with intervals of several drones every hour. This is the first time that Ukrainian energy workers are observing such tactics.

Drone attacks are followed by massive strikes on generation, with the use of ballistics in particular. The last of them took place on October 10when a number of hydroelectric power plants, Prydniprovska and Kryvorizka thermal power plants and the capital thermal power plant were affected. Most of the objects were seriously damaged.

The global plan of the enemy is unchanged – to unbalance the system and cause a cascading accident, which is commonly called a blackout. To do this, the Russians are trying to first divide the country’s energy system into two large parts and make them unmanageable. On the map, their goal looks something like this:

To cause you are a large-scale blackout, the Russians are trying to tear Ukraine’s energy system in half. The red line on the map is a conditional “energy watershed” that separates the “left-bank” and “right-bank” parts of the country

The goal is to create a deficit in the east of the country, where historically consumption is always higher, and almost all local generation is already broken; and gradually paralyze the flow of electricity from the west to the eastern regions.

As a result, the country may find itself in two realities: a deficient East and a surplus West, between which the “intersections” are very weak. This is the perfect situation for the enemy to cause a blackout.

The next step may be an attack on shunting generation in the western regions (thermal power plants), and later an attack on the distribution devices of nuclear power plants.

If these facilities receive significant damage at the same time, nuclear plants will not be able to provide electricity to consumers, a frequency jump and a system breakdown are possible.

This is a scenario that Ukrainian energy companies are fine with will be remembered from November 23, 2022when the country experienced the largest blackout in its history. More than 10 million people were left without electricity, water and heating at the same time. The power system was stabilized in about a day, but the restoration of electricity in the regions lasted 2-3 days, in some places – up to a week

What Ukrainians should prepare for. For long emergency and planned shutdowns. As the experience of past years shows, for one–two attacks, the enemy is able to knock out a larger volume of generation than Ukraine can return for the whole summer.

“This winter will definitely be deficient. Already today, emergency shutdowns are in effect almost all over the country. Most likely, in the winter we will have a “4×2″ scenario: four hours without electricity, two hours with electricity”, – predicts a representative of one of the state energy companies.

At the same time, it is already obvious that the most difficult situation will be in the front-line and border regions. First of all, this concerns the already mentioned Chernihiv Oblast and Sumy Oblast, as well as Kharkiv Oblast, Zaporizhzhia, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, Mykolaiv Oblast, Odesa Oblast, and Kherson Oblast.

According to the interlocutor, one of the key problems is that air defense cannot provide one hundred percent protection.

“If 30-50 drones and missiles fly at one object, even the most powerful systems are not able to intercept everything. And one accurate hit is enough to disable a power unit of a power plant. As for substations, technically the consequences of shelling can be eliminated in two – three weeks, but it does not save if there is no generation” – he explains.

At the same time, the Russians are attacking the gas infrastructure: production, compressors of underground storages, regional gas distribution networks.

“Their goal is not only to destroy the energy industry, but also to disrupt the gas balance, so that Ukraine, among other things, cannot stably supply fuel for the generation of electricity and heat.” – says the top manager of another energy company off the record.

The situation is also complicated by the fact that the Russian military is helped to plan and prepare massive shelling by their energy engineers, who know exactly our gaps and weak points.

“This is no longer a war of weapons – it’s a war of engineers. On both sides, there are energy engineers who monitor shelling, count megawatts, reserves. Some build, others destroy. And the front line now passes not only in the trenches, but also between control panels.” – adds a representative of one of the companies.

Three levels of protection, two construction and one unknown In addition to the air defense system, transformer substations and distribution points can and should be saved by physical protection systems. Simply put – a shelter.

They first began to be built in the fall of 2022, when after the attacks on the Kharkiv power plant, the Russians began to attack large substations.

Then, the first protection system became large sandbags, gabions, with which power workers simply covered transformers from debris.

“Then the Shaheds were not so accurate, and the rockets flew somewhere into the fields. Therefore, these bags were calmly saved from the debris when an explosion occurred somewhere nearby.” recalls one of officials involved in the search for protection solutions.

But even then it was obvious that the energy system could not be protected simply with sacks. At that time, Zelenskyi decided that it was necessary to deal with this issue systematically, and entrusted it to the team of Oleksandr Kubrakov and the Agency for Reconstruction, which was headed by Mustafa Nayem at the time.

“They quickly went to the General Staff, gathered the military and asked them to calculate what actually needed to be built so that it could withstand the impact of drones, and what needed to be built for missiles. Zaluzhnyi had General Koval at the time, who gathered a team of really cool engineers. They calculated everything. And a system of three levels of protection came out.” – recalls one of the members of Kubrakov’s team at that time.

The mentioned system assumed that first level protection is the installation of gabions with sand.

The second level – it was necessary cover large transformers at key substations with concrete and metal structures.

The third level of protection consisted in completely covering the entire substation with concrete and iron structures and filling it with earth from above.

In total, it was necessary to protect 80 key transformer substations across the country, which would ensure the stability of the entire system.

“Ukrenergo had about 80 key 750 megavolt substations and 330 MV substations, which made up the core of the system. The president decided that the 20 most important substations should be protected by the Recovery Agency. The second level of protection was to be built on most of them. The third level was planned to be built on some part. The rest, about 60 substations, had to be protected by Ukrenergo itself.” – explains the interlocutor, related to the construction.

Construction proceeded, but almost immediately to the accompaniment of political clashes. The then Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal could not understand why the second-level protection complex from the Agency costs twice as much – three times more in millions of hryvnias than similar structures erected by “Ukrenergo”. Against this background, a lot of meetings and quarrels, delays in money, disruption of deadlines and similar internal system failures took place.

“Everything is simple there. No one thinks that all the objects of the Agency have a conclusion of the General Staff, with signatures and seals, which determined exactly what and how it should be built. And if it is said that there should be so many centimeters of concrete, and so many millimeters of metal, then it is built there. And, as a result, first 8 drones arrive at the substation in Nizhyn, then 12 more, and not even a transformer stops working”, – explains the vision of the Agency, one of the former officials involved in its work.

“And in the Kirovohrad region, Ukrenergo recently built two drones according to its “cheaper and better” project – and the entire substation burned down. Now all these costs for replacement and simple without light should also be included in the price of the project?” – adds the indignant exhibitor.

But in the end, both because of the issue of prices, and because of the large-scale “disadvantages” of the third level of protection, and simply because of the politics of Kubrakov’s team from the authorities and pushed out. When this happened in the spring of 2024, their facilities had an average of 85% readiness for level two shelters. “Ukrenergo” for that moment little about 40%.

But the main problems began when not only Kubrakov was asked to resign, but also the head of Ukrenergo, Volodymyr Kudrytskyi.

“Kudrytskyi had a very good reputation among partners, so he had a large portfolio of cheap loans for the company. This gave opportunities for maneuvers. When Galushchenko and his company survived, gradually almost all creditors stopped working with Ukrenergo. And the company ran out of resources.” – explains one of the current People’s Deputies of the ruling faction, knowledgeable in the field of energy.

Separately, the factor of relaxation played against the country. After the relatively calm winter of 2024-2025, the authorities in general and the team of the odious ex-Minister of Energy Galushchenko in particular completely dropped the focus on financing the protection of energy facilities. They came up with more interesting topics, how to persuade the Verkhovna Rada to buy “Bulgarian” reactors for the Khmelnytsky NPP.

HR issues at regulators or at specialized state-owned companies took much more time and effort than preparing for completely predictable attacks. Especially in the midst of the change of government, when Galushchenko’s technologists realized that there was no scheme to keep him in his post at the Ministry of Energy – that’s how toxic their client had become.

Then the idea arose to put Svitlana Grynchuk in charge of the country’s energy sector, who had never worked in it, but who would be totally controlled by Herman Valeriyovych himself and his superiors in power.

“It’s even a pity for Hrynchuk. Herman continues to decide all the “interesting” things, as he did. But he works for himself in another ministry anyway. And Svitlana found herself right in the middle of the storm. It’s only October, and the system is already shaking and the chances of fixing something are minimal.” reflects one of the informed “servants” in a conversation with UP.

For almost the entire first half of the year, the government’s energy team was busy with anything but network protection. Back in February 2025, the head of the Recovery Agency reported on 90% completion all objects of the second level of protection. As of October, they are still not completed, in many regions work resumed only a few weeks ago.

“Since the summer, Zelensky has been trying to force all these energy workers to work, the regional military administrations were given an order a few months ago to protect smaller substations at the level of Oblenergo and below. No one did anything except Zaporizhia Oblast,” one of the interlocutors from the energy market who is familiar with the situation told UP.

“Recently, it was determined that Deputy Prime Minister Kuleba will deal with this issue. And OVA is amicably and joyfully dumping everything again on the Recovery Agency. The new chairman Sukhomlin is trying to somehow bring it all together. But it is simply impossible to do it in 2– 3 months, as the team stands. He is already telling the contractors that they can all be shot for missing the deadlines. But this will not change reality,” the interlocutor adds.

“But the most terrible thing is that the president at these ponds asks at least someone to specifically explain who is closing which objects, which need additional protection. And everyone just lowers their eyes and shifts the responsibility to someone else,” one of her witnesses describes the atmosphere at Stavka with sadness in her voice.

Mykola Topalov, Roman Romanyuk, UP