Russian attacks on western Ukraine's electricity networks

Saturday 7 February 2026

Western Ukraine woke today to a familiar, grinding absence — lights that do not come on, pumps that do not push, radiators that cool by the hour — because last night’s strike package was built for a single purpose: to prise apart the moving parts of Ukraine’s electricity system, not by “turning off” a city in one dramatic blow, but by damaging the pieces that allow power to travel from where it is made to where it is used.

The headline numbers give a sense of scale. President Zelenskyy said Russia launched more than 400 drones and around 40 missiles against energy targets. Ukrainian reporting and wire services describe a combined attack that hit generation and the high-voltage backbone of the grid, with particular pressure on western regions. 

But it is the technical character of what was struck that explains why western Ukraine, which many still think of as a “rear area”, can be made to feel like a front line in a single night.

What was aimed at — and why it matters

An electricity system has three broad layers:

First, generation — power stations that turn fuel, heat, water flow or wind into electricity.

Secondly, transmission — the high-voltage network that moves large quantities of electricity over long distances.

Thirdly, distribution — the medium and low-voltage networks that deliver power to towns, streets and individual buildings.

Russia’s modern campaign against Ukraine’s energy sector tends to mix all three — but last night’s pattern concentrated on the first two: thermal power stations and the substations and overhead lines that form the “spine” of the grid.

Ukraine’s energy minister, Denys Shmyhal, said substations and 750 kV and 330 kV overhead lines were hit — he described these as the backbone of Ukraine’s power grid.    Those voltage levels are not a detail for engineers only. They are the difference between a local inconvenience and a regional event.

A 330 kV line is the kind of artery that ties large cities and industrial districts to generation sources. A 750 kV line is an even rarer beast — a strategic trunk route designed to move enormous amounts of power across long distances with lower losses. Damage to either does not merely “black out” a neighbourhood. It forces the grid operator to re-route flows, shed load and sometimes separate parts of the system to keep the remainder stable.

That is why Ukrenergo — Ukraine’s state grid operator — imposed emergency outages nationwide after the strikes. Emergency outages are not the gentle, predictable rolling schedules that households learn to live around. They are the grid’s equivalent of a firebreak — fast disconnections intended to prevent cascades that could bring down a far larger area.

The western targets — Dobrotvir and Burshtyn

Two thermal power plants in western Ukraine were reported struck — Dobrotvir in Lviv Oblast and Burshtyn in Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast. These are not simply “power stations”; they are also nodes around which the western network is balanced.

The Dobrotvir thermal power plant sits beside a community that depends on it not only for electricity but, in practice, for municipal services that require continuous power — water and heating in particular. After the strike, Ukrainian officials reported that about 6,000 residents in Dobrotvir were left without water and heating, while hundreds of thousands of households across Lviv Oblast experienced electricity loss during the morning. Water and heat were later reported restored in Dobrotvir and nearby Staryi Dobrotvir, but the interruption is the point — it shows how an “energy” strike rapidly becomes a public health and housing crisis when temperatures are low. 

Burshtyn matters for a different reason. Western Ukraine’s grid has long had unusual features because of cross-border interconnections and the need to balance supply across regions. When Russia hits Burshtyn, she is not only trying to remove megawatts — she is trying to destabilise a western balancing point, forcing Ukrenergo to rely more heavily on long-distance transmission routes that can themselves be targeted. The Reuters account of the attack explicitly notes damage to key substations and power lines alongside the two thermal plants. 

The weapons mix — why drones and cruise missiles work together

Reports of the strike package describe a mixture of drones and cruise missiles, with Ukrainian media listing types such as sea-launched Kalibr and air-launched Kh-101, alongside hypersonic Zircon in some accounts. Even if individual tallies vary between outlets, the operational logic is consistent and has been repeated through this war.

Drones are used for volume — they force air defences to reveal themselves, expend missiles, and remain on station for hours as waves continue. Cruise missiles are then used for precision at range — hitting substations, transformer yards and plant switchgear where one successful impact can remove a critical component. The combination is designed to saturate, distract and then puncture.

Substations are particularly tempting targets because they contain large power transformers and high-voltage switching equipment. These are not items a regional utility keeps on a shelf in quantity. Many large transformers are bespoke, heavy and difficult to transport. Even when a replacement exists, installing it is not like replacing a household fuse — it involves heavy lifting, specialist testing, and then careful re-energising of the network so that power flows do not overload surviving equipment.

Why nuclear plants reduce output when the grid is hit

One detail in today’s reporting sounds counter-intuitive to non-specialists: nuclear power plants reduced output after strikes on substations and transmission lines. Yet it is precisely what a responsible operator does.

A nuclear plant cannot simply “send power somewhere else” if the grid around it is damaged. Electricity must have a stable pathway into the transmission network. If those pathways are constrained — because lines are down or substations are damaged — generation must be reduced to avoid overloading remaining routes and causing a wider collapse. Multiple outlets reported that strikes affected substations and transmission lines, leading to nuclear output reduction, with the IAEA also referenced in connection with these reductions. 

This matters for western Ukraine even when the nuclear plants themselves are not in the west. If the national system is forced to “unload” big sources of stable generation, the remaining system becomes more reliant on smaller, less stable sources and on imports — and both are vulnerable under continued attack.

Immediate consequences for civilians in the west

The civilian consequences begin with the obvious — darkness, cold, silence — and then rapidly become more granular.

Heating and water: Dobrotvir’s temporary loss of water and heating for thousands illustrates the chain reaction. Even a few hours can matter when pipes are cold and pressure is inconsistent. In apartment blocks, lifts stop. In older buildings, boiler controls fail. In rural settlements, electric pumps become useless, so water systems rely on gravity and stored pressure until they do not.

Communications: Mobile masts and fibre nodes have backup power, but batteries drain. When outages are prolonged or repeated, telecom operators rotate generators between sites — a logistics task made harder by winter roads and by the need to protect fuel supplies.

Healthcare: Hospitals are trained for this — generators, priority circuits and manual procedures — yet the burden is cumulative. Diesel supply becomes a planning exercise. Sterilisation and imaging equipment are power-hungry. Staff commute through darkened streets while also worrying about their own flats.

Economy and work: Western Ukraine’s wartime economy includes workshops, small factories, repair hubs and logistics depots supporting the front. Rolling schedules are survivable. Emergency outages, lasting longer than planned, are not. Businesses lose refrigeration, production time and electronic records. Small firms without generators simply stop.

Psychology: There is a particular cruelty in attacking electricity in winter — the cold creates its own pressure on decision-making. People charge phones rather than cook. Families gather in the one room that can be warmed. Parents are forced to choose between buying fuel, buying food and buying candles.

What it means strategically — and what comes next

Today’s attack also underlines a strategic message. Russia can escalate without advancing a metre on the ground — she can turn Ukraine’s rear into a theatre of attrition, targeting not only comfort but the administrative and industrial capacity needed to sustain war. Reuters notes Ukraine sought emergency electricity imports from Poland following the strikes. That is a rational response — but it also exposes how the campaign aims to push Ukraine into constant dependence on cross-border balancing, which can be disrupted by the next wave of attacks.

For civilians in western Ukraine, the likely near-term outlook is not a single dramatic blackout but a prolonged period of instability:

Repairs will restore many lines quickly — Ukrainian crews are experienced, brave and fast — but transformer yards and high-voltage switchgear take longer to rebuild.

Emergency outage regimes can persist even after “repairs” because the system needs margin — spare capacity — to absorb the next hit.

The cumulative effect is fatigue — households that can cope with two nights of disruption struggle when it becomes a pattern.

This is, in the final analysis, the purpose of the campaign. A power system is not only wires and stations — it is the bloodstream of civilian life. When Russia attacks the 750 kV and 330 kV backbone, she is aiming for systemic stress: making every other service less reliable, more expensive and more precarious. 

Western Ukraine has lived for much of this war with the idea that distance equals safety. The electricity network proves otherwise. It binds the country together — and that is why it is targeted.