Ukraine awoke to a grim reality on December 6, 2025, as Russia unleashed one of the most extensive aerial assaults since the start of the war nearly four years ago. The attack, which spanned the night and into the early hours of December 7, saw Russian forces launch a staggering 653 Shahed-type attack drones, 36 cruise missiles, and 17 ballistic missiles—numbers that Ukraine’s Air Force confirmed as among the highest to date. The strikes targeted 29 locations across the country, hammering critical energy infrastructure, railways, and residential areas, according to The Kyiv Independent and corroborated by CBC and AP reports.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy minced no words in his condemnation. "The main targets of these strikes are once again energy infrastructure," he wrote on social media, underscoring the intent behind the barrage. "The Russians' goal is to hurt millions of Ukrainians, and they have already fallen so low that they launch missiles at peaceful cities on St. Nicholas Day." The timing was especially cruel, coinciding with both Ukraine’s Armed Forces Day and the country’s traditional start of the Christmas season—a moment typically marked by hope and celebration.
The damage was, by all accounts, severe and widespread. Electricity generation, distribution, and transmission facilities in Kyiv, Chernihiv, Lviv, Odesa, Zaporizhzhia, Dnipropetrovsk, Mykolaiv, and Kharkiv oblasts were hit, with the Energy Ministry reporting immediate outages across these regions. In Odesa, Restoration Minister Oleksiy Kuleba detailed the toll: 9,500 households left without heating and 34,000 without water. Fires broke out in food and medicine warehouses in Dnipro and Bila Tserkva, and in the western city of Lutsk, several food warehouses were reduced to ashes. The attacks also sparked blazes in a warehouse in Novi Petrivtsi and a home in Bucha, both in Kyiv Oblast.
Perhaps most alarming was the impact on Ukraine’s nuclear infrastructure. The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the largest in Europe and under Russian occupation since early in the invasion, lost all off-site power for half an hour—the eleventh such incident since the war began, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). While the 330 kilovolt line supplying the plant was eventually reconnected, the main 750 kilovolt line remained down. The IAEA reassured the public that radiation levels remained normal, but the episode highlighted the precariousness of nuclear safety in a war zone. "Other nuclear power plants are now operating below their full capacity for safety reasons," Vitaliy Zaichenko, head of Ukraine’s state grid operator Ukrenergo, told The Kyiv Independent.
The civilian toll was immediate and personal. At least eight people were injured in the overnight attacks, Ukraine’s Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko confirmed—three in Kyiv Oblast, three in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, and two in Lviv Oblast. In Fastiv, about 60 kilometers southwest of Kyiv, a 42-year-old man suffered shrapnel wounds when the city’s main train station was struck and burned down by a drone. "Militarily senseless," Zelenskyy called the attack, a sentiment echoed by local officials. Suburban rail traffic was disrupted, and Ukraine’s state rail operator described the event as a "massive shelling of railway infrastructure." In the Vyshhorodskyi district north of Kyiv, two women, aged 46 and 40, were wounded, with one hospitalized for shrapnel injuries. In Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, an 11-year-old boy was among the injured as fires raged in Pavlohrad and Kryvyi Rih.
Beyond the immediate destruction, the assault forced Ukraine’s hand in imposing rolling power outages nationwide. Hourly blackout schedules were introduced across all regions in an attempt to stabilize the battered grid, Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko announced after an emergency meeting. The outages affected Odesa, Chernihiv, Kyiv, Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk, and Mykolaiv oblasts, leaving millions grappling with the loss of electricity and heat as winter set in. Western officials, including those cited by AP and CBC, have repeatedly warned that Russia’s winter strategy is designed to break Ukrainian morale by depriving civilians of essential services—electricity, heating, and water.
The international repercussions of the attack were immediate. Poland, which shares a long border with Ukraine, scrambled fighter jets and placed its air defense systems on high alert as the hours-long assault unfolded. The Polish Armed Forces High Command described these measures as precautionary, but they underscored the ever-present risk of the war spilling over into NATO territory. The Russian Defence Ministry, for its part, claimed the strikes were aimed at Ukraine’s "military-industrial complex enterprises and the energy facilities that support them," insisting that "all designated targets were hit." The Kremlin also framed the assault as retaliation for what it described as Ukrainian attacks on civilian sites inside Russia.
Ukraine, meanwhile, did not remain passive. Its military claimed responsibility for a strike on Russia’s Ryazan oil refinery and a shell-casing plant in occupied Luhansk early Saturday, moves intended to disrupt Russia’s war machine and deprive Moscow of vital oil export revenue. Russian officials confirmed damage to a residential building and an “industrial facility” in Ryazan, though stopped short of naming the refinery.
All this unfolded as U.S. and Ukrainian officials met for a third consecutive day in Florida, seeking a diplomatic breakthrough that could end the grinding conflict. According to CBC, U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump adviser Jared Kushner joined Ukrainian negotiators Rustem Umerov and Andriy Hnatov in discussions, making what they called "progress on a security framework for postwar Ukraine." Yet, as Witkoff and Kushner admitted, "real progress toward any agreement" would ultimately depend on Russia’s willingness to seriously commit to peace—a prospect that remained elusive. Russian President Vladimir Putin, in comments published Thursday, dismissed some proposals in the U.S. plan as "unacceptable" to the Kremlin, suggesting any deal was still far off.
The diplomatic push is set to continue. Britain announced that Prime Minister Keir Starmer will host Zelenskyy, French President Emmanuel Macron, and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in London on Monday for talks on ending the war. Macron, writing on social media, said, "Ukraine can count on our unwavering support. That is the whole point of the efforts we have undertaken as part of the Coalition of the Willing." He added, "We will continue these efforts alongside the Americans to provide Ukraine with security guarantees, without which there can be no robust and lasting peace. For what is at stake in Ukraine is also the security of Europe as a whole."
As Ukraine braces for further waves of strikes, its government has urged citizens to conserve electricity and prepare for extended outages. The attacks of December 6-7, 2025, were a stark reminder that, even with diplomatic channels open and international support pledged, the war’s toll on Ukraine’s infrastructure and civilian life remains devastatingly high.
