Ukraine is racing to repair its damaged power plants following intensified Russian missile and drone attacks that have crippled electricity generation, raising fears of widespread heating and power shortages as the country prepares for winter.
Workers at a power station operated by DTEK, Ukraine’s largest private energy company, are struggling to clear tonnes of rubble after a Russian missile strike destroyed parts of the facility earlier this month.
The attack tore through the plant’s roof and walls, burying turbines and boilers beneath debris.
The Reuters news agency reported that the facility’s location was withheld at the request of DTEK for security reasons.
Workers, including a technician identified only as Oleksiy, are using shovels and wheelbarrows to access damaged equipment and assess the extent of the destruction.
“Right now, everyone has shovels and wheelbarrows as we try to reach the equipment,” said Oleksiy, who asked to be identified only by his given name.
“The main thing is to get to it, assess its condition and only then make plans for repairs and restoration.”
Russia resumed large-scale attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure in mid-autumn, intensifying its campaign against facilities responsible for supplying electricity and heating to millions of people.
Moscow has repeatedly targeted the country’s power infrastructure since launching its full-scale invasion in 2022, although it denies deliberately attacking civilians.
Ukraine’s ability to protect its energy facilities has also been weakened by a reduction in United States deliveries of Patriot missile interceptors, which Kyiv relies on to counter Russian ballistic missiles.
The country’s air defences are further strained by the deployment of faster jet-powered attack drones.
DTEK said Russia had already attacked three of its power plants with dozens of missiles and drones in November, forcing the facilities to suspend electricity generation.
The attacks have come earlier in the current heating season than last winter, when the company’s five plants were struck 11 times.
“They (the Russians) seem obsessed with leaving us without electricity and heating, and they stick to that goal,” said Oleksiy. “But we restore what they destroy and keep working.”
DTEK workers have had to restart their facilities from scratch more than 70 times since the beginning of the war following Russian strikes.
However, the growing intensity of attacks has raised concerns about the country’s ability to restore sufficient generating capacity before temperatures fall further.
DTEK Chief Executive Officer Maxim Timchenko said the company was doing everything possible to ensure Ukraine had enough electricity generation capacity to survive the winter.
“It’s difficult to say how quickly we can recover,” DTEK CEO Maxim Timchenko told Reuters.
“So we do everything possible to make enough power generation capacity in Ukraine to get through the winter.”
At the damaged facility, workers are breaking concrete and cutting pipes to reach equipment buried beneath the debris, using portable generators to power their lamps.
Their efforts are frequently interrupted by air-raid alerts, forcing them to seek refuge in underground shelters.
A senior power-unit operator, Mykhailo, 46, said the destruction of the plant had been emotionally devastating, particularly because he had witnessed its previous state of operation.
“It reduces me to tears. I know what it looked like when it was intact — everything was lit up, painted and working, producing electricity,” said Mykhailo, 46, a senior power-unit operator.
Workers also described the psychological strain of being repeatedly targeted while trying to restore electricity supplies.
“It’s hard to live through all this when you know the missiles are coming specifically for you, that you are a target,” said Mykhailo.
“Then you come home and feel grateful that you made it, that you are home again, that you can see your family — it’s a mixture of fear and relief.”
Before the war, Ukraine’s thermal power plants accounted for more than 30 per cent of its electricity generation.
Their contribution has since declined significantly following repeated Russian attacks, leaving the country’s three nuclear power plants responsible for the bulk of electricity production.
DTEK, owned by Ukrainian billionaire Rinat Akhmetov, previously operated eight thermal power plants, but Russia has occupied or destroyed three of them during the conflict.
Ukraine’s Energy Minister, Denys Shmyhal, had forecast that the country’s electricity capacity would reach 19.6 gigawatts by November following repairs carried out during the summer.
The figure represents roughly half of the country’s pre-war capacity and was expected to meet peak consumption levels recorded last winter.
However, Russia has increasingly shifted its attacks towards transmission infrastructure, targeting electricity lines and substations to disrupt the distribution of power from functioning plants to major population centres.
Timchenko said electricity generated in western and southern Ukraine was being prevented from reaching consumers in the central and eastern regions, including Kyiv, because of damage to transmission lines.
Substations connecting nuclear power plants to major cities have also become targets, although both sides have avoided directly attacking nuclear power stations to prevent a potentially catastrophic disaster.
The damage to transmission infrastructure has left some areas of central and eastern Ukraine experiencing blackouts lasting up to 18 hours daily, while operational power plants in the western part of the country are exporting electricity to Eastern Europe.
Data from DiXi Group, a Kyiv-based climate and energy think tank, showed that Ukraine’s electricity exports increased by more than 40 per cent between November 2 and 8, even as up to two-thirds of consumers could have been experiencing simultaneous blackouts.
“We have enough power generation in the country,” Timchenko said. “The problem is about transmission.”
