“After another Russian strike on a critical infrastructure facility in Kharkiv on January 17, the city suffered significant damage, threatening the stability of heat and electricity supply. Mayor Ihor Terekhov warned: the energy system is working on the limit, and any new attack can further complicate its work”, — write: www.radiosvoboda.org
“This is not a case of “patched up a little and moved on.” We are talking about serious blows to the system that keeps the city warm and with light. With each such shelling, the centralized supply of heat and electricity becomes more and more difficult. Because the energy industry is in a very difficult state right now: the reserves are not infinite, the load is at its peak, and any new damage immediately “eats up” opportunities for stabilization,” wrote the mayor of Kharkiv.
Terekhov added that critical infrastructure is “constantly running on the edge, and any further hit could mean that maintaining a stable supply will become even more difficult.”
Earlier on January 17, the President of Ukraine named Kharkiv and the Kharkiv region among the regions with the most difficult situation in energy.
Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion in February 2022, Russia has been striking Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. In February of last year, the Ministry of Energy stated that in three years Russia occupied 18 GW of generation, including HPP, TPP and Europe’s largest nuclear power plant – Zaporizhzhya NPP.
Since February 2022, Russia has destroyed more than half of its electricity production, Ukraine’s generation has fallen from 55 to below 20 GW – such data was published by the Financial Times newspaper in June 2024.
According to the Ministry of Energy, as of December 12, since the beginning of 2025, the Russian military has attacked the energy infrastructure of Ukraine 4,500 times, and with the beginning of autumn, these attacks have intensified.
After the last massive attacks by the Russian Federation, the energy system of Ukraine is under a state of emergency, the most difficult situation is in Kyiv and the Kyiv region. After the Russian strike on January 9, emergency shutdowns continue. Kyiv Mayor Vitaliy Klitschko said that this Russian attack was the most painful for the city’s critical infrastructure. He emphasized that the situation is the most difficult in four years.