Russia escalates infrastructure war; assaults on Ukrainian grid cut off services, power to civilians

KHARKIV, Ukraine — Russia made clear early on that it considered civilian infrastructure a legitimate target as its armies sought to conquer Ukraine.

Ukrainians say attacks in recent weeks have been more ferocious than ever as Russian forces press an initiative in the country’s south and east, impairing much of the energy infrastructure and costing an estimated $1 billion worth of damages.

A tour of the battered environs of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city with a prewar population of nearly 1.5 million, offers vivid evidence of the physical and personal devastation of the infrastructure wars.

“I was walking back home and heard a massive explosion,” said Valerii Kharchenko, a 74-year-old resident of Kharkiv’s Kholodnohirs’kyi district. “It was very, very loud.”

On Friday afternoon, a Russian glide bomb tore through the cloudless sky and landed on this quiet residential neighborhood, annihilating two houses and killing an 82-year-old woman. As stunned onlookers gathered around the smoldering ruins and firefighters extinguished the last glowing embers, Mr. Kharchenko told The Washington Times that the event, though horrific, was far from unexpected. Over the past few months, Russian bombs and militarized drones have been striking major cities and small villages across the country.

Along with a numbing regularity of civilian deaths from the attacks, a pattern has emerged over recent weeks as Russian forces methodically struck Ukraine’s energy infrastructure in a bid to paralyze the country and break Ukrainian resolve. The strategy was employed in the winter of 2022, when Russia launched the first wave of strikes against Ukraine’s electricity and heating infrastructure, putting half of the country’s energy sector out of commission.

The intensity and the devastation of the renewed bombing campaign have put the country on its heels.

Ukrainian Energy Minister German Galushchenko declared on national television Sunday that Russian strikes targeting Ukraine’s energy infrastructure had resulted in more than $1 billion worth of damages.

“The attacks continue, and it is obvious that the losses will increase,” he said.

Oleksandr Kharchenko, director of the Energy Industry Research Center and adviser on energy policy to the Ukrainian government, said the Russian attacks also have become more effective.

“In October and November 2023, the Russians tried to attack our power grid without much success,” he said. “They took a pause and gathered intelligence on our energy system — what is currently undergoing maintenance, what is reliable, where our air defense systems are located, and so on.”

On Wednesday night, Russian forces unleashed a barrage of more than 50 missiles at multiple grid targets and the country’s rail network, including facilities in the Vinnytsia, Zaporizhzhia, Kirovohrad, Poltava and Ivano-Frankivsk regions.

Andrii Herus, chairman of the Ukrainian parliament’s committee on energy, told The Associated Press this week that the damage to Ukraine’s power infrastructure has totaled some $12.5 billion since Russia invaded in February 2022, with $1 billion of that damage in just the past two weeks.

Mr. Kharchenko said the Kremlin had recruited Russian energy industry professionals to help refine the bombing campaign.

“They know very well how the energy industry operates and where its vulnerable points are located,” he said. “So they changed tack: Instead of targeting the high-voltage power grid, they strike three or four power-generating units at once with up to 20 drones and 10 or 15 missiles.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said the accelerating attacks are in part a response to Ukraine’s decision to strike Russian oil refineries and other production points. This week, a missile fire from inside Ukraine hit an oil terminal and injured five workers in the Russian-controlled Luhansk region, AP reported.

The new approach was used to devastating effect on March 22 when Russia unleashed more than 150 missiles and drones against its neighbor, striking a number of strategic installations across Ukraine and causing widespread power outages.

Tempting target

Located a mere 18 miles away from the Russian border, Kharkiv has suffered more than any other Ukrainian city from this renewed bombing campaign.

While missile and drone strikes against the city had never fully stopped, their intensity abated somewhat last year. Many residents returned to their hometowns. From about 300,000 inhabitants in the first few months of the invasion, Kharkiv’s population swelled back to 1.3 million over the past year.

Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov said the Russians are trying to render the city “uninhabitable” by methodically destroying its critical infrastructure.

“On March 22, they struck all of our thermal power plants and all of our substations, leading to a complete blackout,” Mr. Terekhov told The Times in an interview late last week.

The visibly exhausted mayor had been delayed by the latest Russian strikes on the city.

“We were able to source electricity from other regions and cities,” he said, “but currently, we don’t have any production capacity left in Kharkiv.”

Already targeted in September 2022, the city’s “TEC-5” thermal power plant was severely damaged during the March 22 attack and had to halt its operations.

“The plant’s restoration involves the manufacture of exclusive equipment for the production units,” Oleksandr Minkovich, the plant’s managing director, said at the time. “If the work is fully financed, production is supported and the equipment is delivered, the reconstruction process will take more than a year.”

The Zmiivska power plant, the region’s largest, was destroyed the same day in another Russian attack.

The strikes have put a significant strain on Ukraine’s energy sector. “The complete restoration of our power plants will take a long time,” Mariia Tsaturian, head of communications at Ukrainian energy operator Ukrenergo, said in late April. She expected additional power cuts over the summer.

Since March 22, Ukraine has had to import electricity from its neighbors while engaging in frantic repairs across the beleaguered country. Oleksandr Kharchenko said the Ukrainian energy sector must be entirely restructured to survive the war.

“We need to reconfigure and decentralize our production capacity, replace all coal-powered infrastructure by gas-fired turbines, pistons and engines,” he said. “We need to move away from our current model, which is huge plants placed near the coal production regions, to instead hundreds of generation units disseminated throughout our cities.”

Mr. Kharchenko said power grid decentralization would further reduce the force of the Russian attacks, ensuring that a single strike doesn’t lead to nationwide blackouts.

“Ukraine has 25 cities of more than 200,000 inhabitants where we need to install power-generating infrastructure to save citizens directly where they live,” he said. “That ought to be our priority over the next two years.”

Mr. Terekhov endorses the shift.

“We’re now in a position where we need to decentralize these systems to prevent their complete destruction by a single missile or drone,” he said. “This is a matter of survival for our people over the winter.”

Whether Ukraine’s massive energy sector can be restructured before cold weather sets in this year is anyone’s guess, but Kharkiv residents have sworn that they won’t abandon their city, come what may.

“This is our city, we love it, and we’re not going anywhere,” a defiant Valerii Kharchenko said as he choked back tears. “There are no two cities like Kharkiv in all of Ukraine.”