As Ukraine braces for its fourth winter since Russia launched a full-scale invasion in February 2022, the country’s energy infrastructure faces one of its gravest challenges yet. In the span of just a few days in October 2025, a relentless barrage of Russian missile and drone attacks has battered oil and gas facilities across the country, plunging entire regions into darkness and threatening to leave millions without heat as temperatures drop below freezing. The timing couldn’t be worse, and the stakes couldn’t be higher.
According to Euronews, Odile Renaud-Basso, President of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), noted that Ukraine was “very well prepared a few days ago” for the approaching winter. The EBRD, in cooperation with Ukraine’s state-run oil and gas company Naftogaz, had been working to ensure the country’s gas storage was sufficient to cover the winter months. But as Renaud-Basso put it, “The new attack creates a new challenge, so it’s important to continue to strengthen and be ready.”
The scale of the latest strikes is difficult to overstate. Bloomberg reported on October 9 that attacks on the Poltava and Kharkiv oblasts damaged nearly 60% of Ukraine’s gas production capacity, though Ukrainian officials have not yet confirmed the exact figure. Sergii Koretskyi, CEO of Naftogaz, described the devastation as “the largest mass attack on our gas mining infrastructure since the beginning of the full-scale war.”
With winter looming, the numbers are daunting. The Kyiv Independent reports that Ukraine needs at least 13.2 billion cubic metres (bcm) of gas to heat homes, schools, hospitals, and businesses from late December through early March. But with critical infrastructure now severely damaged, Ukraine’s energy ministry says it aims to increase natural gas imports by 30% to compensate for the losses. The EBRD has stepped in, promising fresh financing for emergency gas imports to help bridge the gap. “As an institution, as a bank, and with the countries that support Ukraine, we need to be very agile in defining the response and providing support depending on the priorities,” Renaud-Basso told Euronews.
But the attacks have not been limited to gas. Overnight into Sunday, October 12, Russia targeted energy infrastructure in the Donetsk, Odesa, and Chernihiv regions as part of what Ukrainian officials call an ongoing campaign to cripple the power grid before winter. Kyiv regional Governor Mykola Kalashnyk reported that two employees of DTEK, Ukraine’s largest private energy company, were wounded in a strike on a substation. Odesa Governor Oleh Kiper confirmed that a gas facility was damaged, sparking a fire and injuring a woman. “Russia continues its aerial terror against our cities and communities, intensifying strikes on our energy infrastructure,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky posted on X, formerly Twitter.
The numbers Zelensky shared are staggering: over the past week alone, Russia launched more than 3,100 drones, 92 missiles, and around 1,360 glide bombs at Ukrainian targets. The Ukrainian air force said it intercepted or jammed 103 of 118 Russian drones overnight on October 11-12, but the sheer volume of attacks has left the grid—and those who depend on it—reeling.
The human cost is mounting. On October 10, a massive Russian strike wounded at least 20 people in Kyiv and triggered blackouts across the country. Prime Minister Yuliia Svyrydenko called it “one of the largest concentrated strikes” against Ukraine’s energy infrastructure to date, according to the Associated Press. Authorities have scrambled to restore electricity, but outages remain a real concern as the cold sets in.
The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe’s largest, has also been caught in the crossfire. The Russian-occupied facility recently went more than a week without external power, raising fears of overheating and a possible meltdown. Restoration work began on October 9, but the episode underscored just how precarious Ukraine’s energy situation has become.
For its part, Ukraine has not hesitated to strike back. Earlier this week, Ukrainian forces hit the Korobkovsky Gas Processing Plant in Russia, part of a strategy to disrupt the Kremlin’s war machine by targeting its own energy infrastructure. Jessica Berlin, a senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis, framed the situation starkly on X: “Russia bombs Ukrainian energy infrastructure to terrorize civilians and destroy their country. Ukraine bombs Russian energy infrastructure to defend civilians and destroy the Kremlin war machine. There is no equivalence between the two.”
The tit-for-tat escalation has attracted international attention and concern. The European Commission’s Ditte Juul Jørgensen reiterated in September that “the phasing out of Russian energy is a lasting phase out,” emphasizing that Europe’s reliance on Russian fossil fuels is no longer tenable due to security risks. The EBRD has echoed this stance, having made no new investments in Russia since 2014 and suspending Belarus’s access to its resources in April 2022 because of its support for Moscow’s invasion.
Meanwhile, diplomatic tensions continue to simmer. Ukrainian President Zelensky revealed he had a “very productive” phone call with U.S. President Donald Trump on October 12, discussing ways to strengthen Ukraine’s air defense, resilience, and long-range capabilities, including details related to the energy sector. The conversation followed earlier talks about the possible provision of long-range precision strike weapons, such as Tomahawk cruise missiles and more ATACMS tactical ballistic missiles.
The possibility of the U.S. sending Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine has rattled Moscow. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Sunday that “the topic of Tomahawks is of extreme concern.” Russian President Vladimir Putin went further, warning that such a move “will lead to the destruction of our relations, or at least the positive trends that have emerged in these relations... This will mean a completely new, qualitatively new stage of escalation, including in relations between Russia and the United States,” according to a video clip released by Russian state television.
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, a close ally of Putin, expressed skepticism that the U.S. would provide Tomahawks imminently, suggesting that “our friend Donald … sometimes he takes a more forceful approach, and then, his tactic is to let go a little and step back. Therefore, we shouldn’t take this literally, as if it’s going to fly tomorrow.”
For ordinary Ukrainians, the geopolitics matter less than the reality on the ground. As Maciej Zaniewicz and Danylo Moiseienko, analysts for Forum Energii, wrote in an October 7 research piece for The Brookings Institution, “Ukraine’s energy infrastructure is now deeply damaged, operating at only about a third of its pre-invasion generation capacity. This critical state is the result of relentless Russian assaults intended to cripple Ukraine’s economy and undermine its population’s resolve to resist Russian aggression, with the ultimate goal of compelling the Kyiv government to surrender.”
Looking ahead, the EBRD has pledged to deploy at least €3 billion per year for Ukraine’s post-war reconstruction. But as Renaud-Basso cautioned, “For real reconstruction, having a clear visibility and certainty that the war will not start again is important.” Until then, Ukraine’s resilience—and the world’s willingness to support it—will be tested again and again as winter closes in.
