Russia opens its winter campaign on Ukraine's grid before the heating season

Russia's long-expected autumn campaign against Ukraine's energy system began in earnest on the night of 29–30 September. The attack was not the first on energy facilities this year. Prime Minister Serhii Koretskyi said there had hardly been a day since the summer without one. It was, he said, the first 'massive and combined' strike since the end of the previous heating season. It came as forecasters, according to The Guardian, expected freezing night temperatures in Kyiv within days.

What was hit

Missiles and drones struck energy facilities in Kyiv, the surrounding region and elsewhere, and 11 regions came under attack from the Tuesday evening, Koretskyi said. Casualty figures rose as reports came in. Kyiv Post initially reported five dead, including a child, and 14 wounded across the country. The Guardian later cited officials putting the death toll at seven. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said critical infrastructure had been attacked in five regions, with further damage in another five. Centrenergo said generating equipment at the Trypilska thermal power plant near Kyiv had been damaged, without giving details for security reasons. In the capital, a driver for the heating utility Kyivteploenergo was killed when a warehouse was hit, and DTEK said it had restored power to 8,000 households.

The grid operator, Ukrenergo, imposed emergency power cuts in Kyiv and three surrounding regions, according to The Guardian, the first such measure in the capital since the spring. Hourly outages were scheduled in some regions for 1 October. By the morning of 2 October, Ukrenergo reported new outages from continued attacks in the Donetsk, Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhzhia, Mykolaiv, Kharkiv and Chernihiv regions. It planned no consumption restrictions for Friday, but asked consumers to avoid running several high-power appliances at once in the evening so that damaged equipment could keep working. Consumption at 09:30 on 2 October was 3.9 per cent higher than a day earlier. Koretskyi has told local authorities to check backup power at critical facilities and finish connecting any emergency equipment still outstanding.

The plan Kyiv says it intercepted

The strikes coincided with the publication of what Ukraine describes as an intercepted Russian plan. According to The New York Times, as reported by Hromadske, the Energy Minister, Denys Shmyhal, presented the document to European partners in Paris about two weeks earlier. It describes a winter campaign using up to 1,000 missiles, drones and bombs in three stages. The first targets substations near the western border that receive imported European electricity, the second hydroelectric plants, and the third the switchyards connecting Ukraine's three operating nuclear power plants to the grid, with the aim of forcing them offline. It also covers thermal plants, boiler houses and, for the first time on a large scale, water pumping and wastewater facilities. Kyiv, Kharkiv and Odesa are named as primary targets, with electricity and heating to be cut by as much as 90 per cent. The stated goal is to eliminate nearly 15 GW of generating capacity, roughly what Ukraine had available at the end of the summer.

The caveats matter. The New York Times said it could not authenticate the Russian-language document, which is dated August, and it is not clear whether Moscow will carry out the strategy it describes. The Institute for the Study of War, as reported by Mezha, assessed that the 30 September strikes may mark the start of a winter campaign meant to weaken Ukraine's energy security and morale. It argued that Russia began before Ukraine had finished preparing the grid and its defences against ballistic missiles and jet-powered drones.

ISW also put the strikes in a military context. It suggested that Ukraine's battlefield gains this year may have changed Vladimir Putin's calculations, and that Russia may step up long-range attacks on cities and energy facilities to raise pressure on Ukraine ahead of any serious peace talks. In the same days, Zelenskyy said a Ukrainian counteroffensive near Lyman had recaptured 176 square kilometres since it began, The Guardian reported.

Better stocked, more widely exposed

By several measures Ukraine is better placed than a year ago. The Ukrainian Weekly reports that underground storage held 14.6 bcm of gas by late August, meeting the government's baseline target a month early, against about 9.6 bcm on 1 August 2025. Koretskyi said on 27 September that the country had added generating capacity, equipped more critical facilities with backup power, strengthened physical protection and expanded reserves of equipment and repair crews. He also warned that Russia had adapted, with jet-powered Shahed drones and stockpiles of ballistic and cruise missiles built up for the winter. The government has drawn up contingency scenarios that include severe damage to the energy system, and it has asked European partners to provide emergency services, rescue specialists and equipment if attacks cause large-scale emergencies. Under pressure on public finances, the cabinet has postponed state financing for non-critical construction and repair projects.

The target set has also widened beyond power stations. On 22 September at least five ballistic missiles hit a Naftogaz oil and gas facility in the Poltava region, which the company said could not be restored. Naftogaz says that in the first seven months of 2026 Russian strikes destroyed 32 Ukrnafta filling stations and five Ukrgasvydobuvannya production facilities. Digital infrastructure is a newer target. Strikes on Kyiv data centres on 23 September disrupted connections for about 100,000 households served by providers including UTELS and Pavutyna, and on 27 September a strike hit the Kyiv headquarters of Kyivstar, the largest mobile operator. Providers restored much of the service by rerouting traffic, and specialists quoted by The Ukrainian Weekly say a nationwide internet shutdown would be very hard to achieve.

What to watch

• Whether further strikes follow the sequence in the reported plan, in particular attacks on western substations that receive European imports or on the nuclear plants' grid connections.
• Ukrenergo's schedules as heating demand rises: a return to rolling outages in Kyiv would signal that repairs are not keeping pace.
• Requests to European partners for equipment, emergency personnel and air defence, which Ukraine has already raised as part of its winter contingency planning.

Sources

• Kyiv Post — Russia Unleashes Massive Energy Strikes on Ukraine Ahead of Winter, Killing Five
• Hromadske — Russia resumes large-scale attacks on Ukraine's energy system, damages Trypilska power plant
• The Guardian — Ukraine war briefing: Russia pounds power grid with seven killed in biggest energy attack in months
• Mezha — ISW warns Russian strikes may signal a winter campaign against Ukraine's energy grid
• Mezha — Russian Attacks Cause Power Outages in Six Ukrainian Regions as Electricity Use Rises
• Hromadske — Intercepted Russian plan outlines winter campaign to cut power, heat and water in Ukrainian cities - NYT
• The Ukrainian Weekly — Ukraine enters winter better prepared as Russia expands attacks on energy, digital infrastructure