By Olha Chepil | 2024-04-18

KYIV -- While Russian missile attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure this spring are growing in intensity and have caused significant damage, the Kremlin has still failed to achieve its goal of complete destruction, say analysts.

Since late March, Russia has launched near continuous strikes on Ukraine's power grid, leaving more than a million people without electricity.

Russia has hit up to 80% of Ukraine's conventional power plants and half its hydroelectric plants in the heaviest attacks since war began, Ukrainian Energy Minister German Galushchenko said April 8, according to AFP.

"This is the largest attack on Ukraine's energy sector" since the start of the war, the minister said.

The Trypilska thermal power station, one of the biggest electricity suppliers to Kyiv province, was destroyed by Russian missiles on April 11.

Earlier on March 22, Russian missile strikes badly damaged the Dnipro Hydroelectric Station in Zaporizhzhia city, Ukraine's largest hydroelectric power plant.

Russia's strategic objective is the total collapse of the Ukrainian energy system, say observers.

While Russia last year attempted to plunge Ukraine into darkness and cold by striking distribution and transformer substations throughout the country, it has now turned its focus toward power plants in areas less defended than Kyiv. The strategy is a bid to knock out power to large industrial regions and cities, say the analysts.

"The situation is complicated, difficult and close to critical. Almost all peaking plants were damaged -- all the thermal and some hydroelectric power plants," said Andrian Prokip, an energy analyst with the Ukrainian Institute of the Future.

Peaking plants, or peaker plants, operate only when high demand for energy exists.

The new wave of Russian attacks on the Ukrainian energy sector is much more intense than in the fall of 2022, Prokip told Kontur.

The strikes themselves are far more accurate, and their consequences are more destructive, he said.

Russia is using expensive high-precision ballistic missiles for these attacks, and Ukraine has only a few Patriot air defense systems capable of shooting them down, he added.

"The most difficult situation is in Kharkiv, because all generating capacity has been knocked out there, and the generation system there is being hit. It's difficult to go there from other regions. They're targeting with precision to simply snuff out Kharkiv completely," said Prokip.

A painful hold

Russia is destroying the power grid in order to eliminate the industrial capacity of defense factories or other enterprises in the military-industrial complex and to influence the situation at the front, according to Ivan Stupak, a former Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) officer and analyst with the Ukrainian Institute of the Future.

"They will try to 'take out' our economy. Electricity is the production of everything. It's the repair of medical equipment. It's the production of vehicles, the production of shells and ammunition," said Stupak.

March's massive attacks on the Ukrainian energy system are Russian President Vladimir Putin's revenge for Kyiv's drone attacks on Russian oil refineries, Stupak said.

"This is targeted revenge, like what wrestlers do. We went for a painful hold. We made it hurt a lot. These blows were the most painful for them. Putin himself has admitted this," he said.

"What is their objective? To destroy the civilian energy infrastructure," Vladimir Omelchenko, director of energy programs at the Razumkov Center, told Kontur.

"Then people won't have the opportunity to live a civilized life. They will have no opportunities for means of subsistence, since all industry will come to a halt. There will be no heating, and as a result, many will die, many will get sick, and the rest will be forced to go abroad," said Omelchenko.

The attacks on the energy sector may be connected with a predicted Russian offensive expected in Ukraine in late spring or early summer, he said.

"They are attacking us because they are preparing for some kind of offensive. They sense that our air defense is now exhausted, and it is a good time to strike at this very moment," said Omelchenko.

The sun saves

"From March 22 to April 11 alone, Ukraine lost about 6GW of generating capacity. This is approximately equal to the entire capacity of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant [which Russian forces seized at the start of the war]," said Omelchenko.

"This is a huge amount. But despite this, Ukraine's energy system remains stable today," he said.

A few months after Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022, Ukraine connected its grid to neighboring European Union (EU) countries -- Romania, Slovakia, Hungary and Poland.

If not for the energy imported from the EU and an increase in energy production from renewable sources, Ukraine would again face massive power outages, Omelchenko believes.

For now, power engineers are able to use the sun to balance the energy system. Thanks to the warm weather, solar energy at midday supplies 20-25% of the country's energy needs.

"If it were winter now -- 5 or 10 degrees below zero [Celsius], then we would have a large shortage of electrical energy... That would mean that we would move to scheduled blackouts and the whole country would sit without electricity for many hours a day," said Omelchenko.

To lighten demand during the peak hours of 6pm to 10pm, large businesses are shifting operations and electricity consumption to nighttime.

The government has asked the public to join in energy conservation during these hours, for example, by not ironing, doing laundry or using electrical appliances.

"Despite all these attacks, the system has been kept in place," Energy Minister Galushchenko said on April 13 at a meeting of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities held in Chernivtsi.

"It is balanced and is working steadily today."