“If Kyiv hadn’t held on, tens of thousands of people would have simply frozen to death.” It’s the kind of statement that makes you want to shout it to the world, not just tally the damage from yet another Russian airstrike. For Oleksandr Kharchenko, director of the Energy Research Centre, it’s almost an answer to the age-old question: “What is the meaning of life?” At its core, it’s about this: knowing that around you, there are people capable of miracles. Kharchenko points to the specialists who, despite Russian attacks on Ukraine’s energy system, keep Ukrainian homes lit and heated — or will make sure they are again.
In this interview, The Ukrainian Week takes a closer look at the latest Russian strikes on Ukraine’s energy system, why Kyiv can’t yet avoid power outages, and how the electricity deficit could be addressed.
— DTEK, Ukraine’s largest private energy company, has warned that the country is on the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe due to Russian airstrikes on the energy system. Its CEO, Maksym Timchenko, also called for an “energy truce.” How much do you share that assessment?
— The truth is, Ukraine—and Kyiv in particular—came perilously close to a major man-made catastrophe. When the city’s combined heat and power plants were severely damaged on 9 January, it was, frankly, terrifying to witness. The main source of electricity—and even more crucially, of heat—looked like a steaming pile of rubble. But the gravest threat wasn’t even the loss of electricity. It was the absence of heat for more than 6,000 buildings in Kyiv—home to 1.4 million people. This was nothing short of an attempt at ‘cold genocide’, a weaponised winter terror.
Just imagine if the city hadn’t held up. At –20°C, entire buildings would have frozen. Three or four days with no heat—not just poor heating, but none at all—and living indoors would have been impossible. The human cost? Tens of thousands could have simply frozen to death.
And I am certain this was exactly what the Russians intended. Their goal was brutally simple: make Kyiv unlivable and, in the process, carry out a well-orchestrated ‘cold genocide’—targeting Ukrainians, starting with the residents of the capital.
A large-scale man-made disaster in Kyiv was prevented because everyone involved knew what to do and was prepared for such scenarios. Water was drained in time from heating systems in buildings left without heat after another massive Russian attack, and released from those sections of Kyivteploenergo’s network where there was a risk of freezing. As a result, within hours two of the three damaged combined heat and power plants were restarted, and heat began returning to homes. The third plant, the most heavily damaged, was also brought back online within two days.
This is truly unique. Under these conditions, Ukraine did something no one anywhere in the world has ever done. Just compare: in Berlin, a group of activists burned five cables, leaving 55,000 households without electricity and heat for eight days. In Kyiv, after an attack involving 16 missiles and serious damage to CHP plants, heat supply in most buildings was restored the very next day. The people who made this possible, in a sense, worked miracles.
Kyiv is, in effect, a vast energy district that consumes a significant amount of electricity during cold spells. At temperatures of –17 to –20°C, it requires almost 2 GW of capacity. The city’s three combined heat and power plants, even after sustaining heavy damage, were still producing nearly a gigawatt, allowing Kyiv to feel relatively stable. But once they were damaged to the point that they could no longer generate electricity for at least several months, the capital was forced to rely almost entirely on external power supplies.
That would be difficult even in peacetime. Kyiv’s grid was never designed to draw all of its electricity from outside sources. Internal generation from the CHP plants had always provided a crucial “support” within the city. Now, that support is gone.
Air defence intercepts a large number of missiles and drones, but even the few that get through cause serious damage, because the system as a whole has already taken a heavy blow and key capacity has been lost.
Parts of Kyiv remain under threat. Troieshchyna, in particular, is still in the risk zone, because this part of the city can receive heat from only a single source, which is currently badly damaged. I hope that by the time the cold returns, heat will have been restored to around a thousand buildings in Troieshchyna. And that we will ultimately get through this situation, despite all the Russian efforts.
— You said that “we walked right along the edge of catastrophe.” Can we now say that the crisis has been averted? And when you say “everyone knew what to do,” does that mean Kyiv was actually prepared for situations like this?
— I think that if Kyiv had not been prepared, you and I would not be having this conversation in the capital today. There were drills and briefings. Special software applications were developed to monitor conditions across different heating districts. In short, a huge amount of work was done. And over many months, I watched people at every level — from the deputy mayor responsible for this, Petro Panteleiev, to the head of the профильний department at the Kyiv City State Administration, Dmytro Naumenko, and the director of Kyivteploenergo, Viacheslav Bind — prepare for the worst-case scenario.
But let us be honest: after getting through the winter of 2024–2025 without major power outages, and then a relatively calm summer, the country relaxed. Only what I would call, in a good sense, the “hardened paranoiacs” — mostly energy professionals — kept saying, “We need to do something,” and kept doing it.
Was everything that needed to be done actually done? No, of course not. One could draw up a long list of what else might have been done. But it would be wrong to say that those responsible were not preparing.
— You mentioned Kyiv’s “energy structure.” In a new report, researchers at the Institute for the Study of War say Russia is trying to split Ukraine’s energy system into separate “energy islands,” cut off from generation, supply, and transmission. What does that actually mean, and what kind of risks does it create?
— Ukrainian energy specialists were already talking about this around six months ago. Russian military thinking on how to destroy Ukraine’s infrastructure evolved in stages. At first, they tried to deliver a comprehensive strike against the entire energy system. In 2022, we did experience a blackout once. They were eager to repeat it, but they failed.
Russia then shifted to a second phase, trying to split Ukraine’s energy system into right‑bank and left‑bank parts, using the river as a natural dividing line. On the left bank, generation facilities were hit much harder, while on the right bank nuclear power remained — and, thankfully, has so far not been targeted. The idea was to break the country into separate energy zones. That phase ended in August 2025, when it became clear this, too, wouldn’t work.
They then moved on to the next stage — the one we’re living through now. This is an attempt to knock out the energy infrastructure of specific regions altogether. To do that, they zeroed in on Kyiv, Odesa, Kryvyi Rih, Dnipro, and Kharkiv — Ukraine’s largest population centres, and therefore the most convenient targets. A missile reaches Kryvyi Rih in about a minute and a half; Odesa can be hit by drones from the sea and missiles from Crimea; Kharkiv’s exposure needs no explanation; and Kyiv, with its huge consumption and relative proximity to the border, is an obvious target as well.
Odesa has never had its own power plants, but the Russians are trying to wipe out Kryvyi Rih and everything between it and Dnipro entirely. At the same time, a shortage of air defence missiles allowed them to knock out electricity and heat production in Kyiv. Kharkiv has since been hit as well.
Russians broke through in the Odesa region on the third attempt, triggering a serious crisis: in some towns, electricity was out for two weeks. But there were no frosts then. Kyiv was a different story.
To strike the capital, they deliberately stockpiled resources over a long period and planned the attack carefully, delivering several successive waves during a spell of severe cold. In January alone, Russians carried out six large-scale strikes on Kyiv. I am certain they were counting on the city to “collapse” and on a major man-made catastrophe to follow. I do not think that will happen anymore.
— Is it fair to say that the way Russia is targeting our energy system helps explain why some cities and districts have electricity running more smoothly than Kyiv and the surrounding area? What causes these differences?
— Kyiv, Odesa, and Kharkiv have unique conditions, so they can’t really be compared with other Ukrainian cities. But each region has its own specifics. Take Chernivtsi and the surrounding areas, for example. That energy region relies on a single nuclear power plant. After the Russians struck the substations transmitting power from that plant, it hasn’t been able to deliver enough electricity, leaving the region somewhat isolated. Right now, there simply aren’t enough resources to meet everyone’s needs — just like in Kyiv today. Once the substation is restored in two to four days, power will return.
It’s also entirely possible that two neighbouring villages can face very different situations. In one, there may be no outages at all because it belongs to a different energy region, while in the other, electricity could be off for 16 hours a day. And this is entirely plausible, even if the villages are only a kilometre apart. In Kyiv, the same can happen between neighbouring buildings, depending on how they are connected.
— Since we’ve touched on the varying levels of electricity challenges, about a week ago Energy Minister Denys Shmyhal announced plans to audit the electricity supply to implement a “fair distribution” of power across regions. Can that actually be done in practice?
— First off, it’s not about trying to make all regions “equal”. It’s really about making sure that places that aren’t part of critical infrastructure aren’t still connected to it for some reason. Every region has a fair number of these.
— When you say a “significant number,” can you give an example of roughly how many that would be?
— Frankly, the situation isn’t the same everywhere — it varies from city to city — and often it’s caused by circumstances beyond the residents’ control. Take, for example, a residential complex that, even in peacetime, was connected to a metro substation simply because there was spare capacity. Now that connection has become a problem: the complex can’t be disconnected without separate construction work that could take nine months. The end result is the same — critical infrastructure, like the metro, ends up “using” extra electricity. And in most cases, this isn’t anyone’s fault.
That is why an inventory is necessary: to understand the scale of the issue in each settlement and gradually reclassify such facilities as non-critical infrastructure. This cannot be done in a week or two.
It requires careful, methodical work over time — “clearing” truly critical infrastructure and connecting it to backup power sources. Kyiv residents, I think, know better than anyone what it’s like when there is no water or heat.
— Since we’re talking about critical infrastructure, what’s your take on the government’s plan to classify apartment buildings with electric heating as critical infrastructure, so they would only face outages in emergencies? Is that realistic?
— Yes, it’s realistic, though it takes time. As far as I know, there are very few such buildings. In this case, I really like the phrase: “You can reach an agreement with me, but not with the transformer.” There are physical limits to the grid. Imagine a building with electric heating, where the nearest point of critical infrastructure is 10 kilometres away. You would need to either run a new line or reconnect it by some other means. Most likely, equipment would need to be procured, installed, and configured — and in that case, we’re talking months.
— When the power outages began, Ukrainians were urged to conserve electricity wherever they could. Did it actually make a difference?
— It made a difference, but only a small one — around 2–4%. Experience shows that the best way to get people to save energy is to make it expensive. As long as electricity is artificially subsidised and basically costs nothing, saving just doesn’t happen.
I remember this vividly: in 2013, Ukraine used 72 billion cubic metres of gas. By 2015, that number had fallen to 26. What happened in between? Simple: in 2014, gas prices were set by the market. For a year or two, consumption adjusted, and then the usual manipulations kicked in. But for a while, the country saw a real surge in energy efficiency.
— By the way, what’s the current situation with gas reserves?
— Actually, gas supplies are in good shape — we have solid reserves. I keep saying it: the team led by [Serhiy] Koretsky (elected chairman of the board of NJSC Naftogaz of Ukraine in April 2025 — Ed.) really pulled Ukraine out of an extremely tough spot. Back in spring 2025, our storage facilities were completely empty, and we didn’t even have the funds to buy more gas. If we were facing shortages now, we wouldn’t have been able to weather another crisis.
— Last week, Ukraine hit a record electricity deficit — nearly 7 GW during the morning peak, according to energy expert Stanislav Ihnatiev. In plain terms, what does that mean?
— Our calculations show that consumers “expect” 18 GW of electricity, while the system can physically provide just under 12 GW. That leaves a 7 GW shortfall. To cover it, we have no choice but to disconnect people. There’s no way around it.
— And how can we cover this deficit?
— First, by restoring the damaged capacities. In the short term, this is the top priority — hydro and thermal power need to be brought back online. The second priority is quickly rolling out small-scale power plants wherever they’re needed to keep critical infrastructure running. This also includes smaller commercial projects, mostly gas-fired units, built in significant numbers. As far as I know, about 600–700 MW are already under construction in various setups.
After that, we need to build the new power plants. They will be completely different from the ones we had before, since modern systems are far more compact and efficient.
The first wave will likely focus on cogeneration in large cities, with capacities scaled to each location. In Kyiv, Odesa, Kryvyi Rih, and Kharkiv, portable units of 200, 500, and 600 MW will be needed to keep both the lights and heat on. But building them won’t be quick — it will take three to five years and cost 8 to 10 million euros.
— We still have the rest of the winter to get through, but can we expect power supply to get easier in spring and summer?
— First of all, the warmer it gets, the easier it will be. With the arrival of spring, electricity consumption naturally drops. Across Ukraine, every degree below zero adds roughly 200 MW of extra demand that consumers want but that the system cannot provide. Second, the spring thaw will increase water levels, boosting hydropower generation. Solar power will also help improve the situation.
We still have far too few battery systems, though these will be built, including by households. I’m certain many people will install 10–12 kW of solar panels on their roofs and batteries of up to 20 kWh in their homes — simply because it’s a matter of energy security.
