Ukraine Frantically Tries To Restore Electricity & Heating In Worst Crisis Since War’s Start

Ukraine has been working frantically through Sunday into Monday to restore electricity and heating after a wave of Russian strikes on energy infrastructure severely disrupted parts of the country’s power supply over the weekend, which we documented earlier.

Moscow has only intensified its assaults on Ukraine’s energy network in recent months as Trump-backed peace efforts have waned, with each side blaming the other for this. Friday into Saturday alone saw many hundreds of drones and missile pummel Ukraine.

But Ukraine answered, as we also reported, by leaving more than 20,000 people without power in areas near the border, according to local Russian officials.

The war-ravaged nation’s energy minister Svitlana Grynchuk had said Saturday, “Currently, power generation is down to zero” and introduced that rolling power outages would remain, with the power cut for between eight and 16 hours a day across most regions of Ukraine through Sunday.

She further indicated regular outages would be seen across Kyiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, Kharkiv, Poltava, Chernigiv and Sumy oblasts.

“The enemy inflicted a massive strike with ballistic missiles, which are extremely difficult to shoot down. It is hard to recall such a number of direct strikes on energy facilities since the beginning of the invasion,” she told a local TV station.

She further called the Friday into Saturday Russian assault “one of the most difficult nights” since the February 2022 all-out Russian invasion.

There have even been new outages due to fresh shelling of critical infrastructure on Monday, with state energy company Ukrenergo announcing:

“Due to the consequences of Russian shelling, a difficult situation in the energy system – today measures to limit consumption are being applied. By the end of the day in most regions there will be hourly outage schedules covering 2 to 4 stages. Also in regions where hourly power cuts are used, there will also be power-limitation schedules for industry and business.”