Russian shelling has turned Kyiv into the epicentre of the largest energy disaster in modern history. How did the occupiers manage to carry out a plan of cold genocide? Why was Kyiv’s energy system so vulnerable? And what does it truly mean to be energy-secure?
Final collapse of illusions
The period following 9 January 2026 has been Kyiv’s most challenging since the start of Russia’s war against Ukraine. The capital is now left with almost no domestic energy generation, while the supply of power from outside the city has been stretched to its limits.
This winter will go down in Kyiv’s history as the point when the last illusions about the viability of the Soviet-style, centralised energy system finally shattered. It is now painfully clear: the old strategy of endlessly “patching up” large combined heat and power plants has run its course. Today, comfort at home is no longer a service guaranteed by the state. Instead, people’s well-being depends on how autonomous—read: decentralised—their building or residential complex has managed to become.
Kyiv is entering a new phase of preparedness, where surviving the winter is no longer about a power bank or knowing the nearest shelter. It requires a full rethink of urban infrastructure—from installing local power generation in every neighbourhood to turning ordinary basements into hubs of essential services, complete with generators, communications, and heat.
Chronicles of energy collapse
As of early February 2026, Kyiv’s energy system resembles a battlefield of constant engineering struggle. After the waves of Russian missile strikes, more than 3,000 buildings were left without heat, while the number of residents without electricity across the city and surrounding region often topped 500,000.
At the heart of the crisis is the capital’s loss of domestic power generation. Experts warn that the damage to thermal plants and substations has created a shortfall that imports alone cannot cover.
January’s relentless shelling also brought a new danger: freezing within building networks. During severe frosts of –10°C and below, energy workers were forced to drain heating systems in hundreds of buildings to prevent pipes from bursting. Even when the number of homes without heat drops to a few hundred, the crisis quickly resurfaces after each new wave of large-scale attacks.
The situation with shelters in Kyiv remains precarious. Officially, more than 4,000 shelters are said to be operational, enough to house 97 per cent of the city’s population. But an investigation by Slidstvo.Info paints a bleaker picture: only 77 of these sites are certified public civil-defence shelters, capable of holding just 54,000 people—around 2 per cent of the capital’s residents.
Most Kyivans cannot reach metro stations quickly, relying instead on basements and parking garages. These improvised shelters come with serious limitations during power outages. Heating is often nonexistent: if combined heat and power plants go offline, basement temperatures quickly plummet to match the icy streets above. Ventilation is another weak point—without electricity, airflow stops, limiting how long people can safely remain inside.
The capital’s left bank, including the Troieshchyna district and other dense residential areas, is particularly vulnerable. Supplied entirely by CHP-6, a shutdown at this plant would cut off the city’s largest sleeping district from essential services, leaving it completely dependent on a single source of heat.
Energy resilience, shelter infrastructure
Today, the idea of winter readiness has shifted completely—from simply stockpiling gas and other fuels to a full-scale technological overhaul. Being prepared now means that a city, a district, or even a single building can operate autonomously for several days without any external power supply.
Rather than focusing on repairing large, vulnerable energy plants, the emphasis is now on deploying a network of small, distributed energy sources. These include gas-powered units ranging from 1 to 50 MW—hard to disable all at once and capable of keeping individual neighbourhoods alive even if the national grid fails, as it did during the 31 January blackout.
At the community level, preparedness now means moving toward energy independence for individual buildings or residential complexes. Kyiv has been encouraging this shift through financial initiatives, most notably the 70/30 programme, which co-funds energy-efficiency upgrades in residential buildings. Under the scheme, the city covers 70 per cent of the cost, with residents paying the remaining 30 per cent. Most commonly, upgrades include individual heat substations, backup power for pumps, and rooftop solar installations. Even in peacetime, on-site generation allows buildings to rely less on the central grid, cutting energy costs for residents.
By September 2025, Kyiv had around 1,000 so-called “energy-resilient” buildings—less than 10 per cent of the city’s housing stock. Yet many residents remain unaware of these options, or are unable to organise themselves for various reasons. Local authorities need to step up public outreach on energy resilience, including clear, step-by-step guidance to help communities prepare.
Another pressing challenge is shelters. Experience from this and previous winters has shown that shelters must have autonomous heating and ventilation—without them, prolonged blackouts make the spaces unfit for extended use. Kyiv’s new protective-facility concept, the Ukraine Shelter Cluster, envisions shelters that can operate entirely off the central grid.
The plan includes installing solid-fuel stoves or pellet boilers, as basements can become dangerously cold in low temperatures. It also calls for ventilation systems powered manually or by batteries, ensuring that people can remain in shelters during extended air-raid alerts without risking suffocation.
Cogeneration: core of new energy strategy
Until now, Kyiv’s energy security depended on massive combined heat and power plants (CHPs), which accounted for nearly half—49.5 per cent—of the city’s own consumption before 2022. But the future lies with smaller, distributed energy sources.
At the heart of the new strategy is cogeneration: systems, mostly gas-piston or gas-turbine units, that produce electricity and heat simultaneously. These units can keep water pumps and heating running in their neighbourhoods even if the central grid is severely damaged.
By January 2026, Kyiv had received more than 40 of these units from Germany and other international partners. Local authorities plan to build a network capable of up to 100 MW, enough to sustain at least basic services across the city. On top of that, Kyiv operates a fleet of more than 50 mobile boiler units, running on gas, diesel, or pellets, and insulated from shortages of any single fuel. The city will need to expand this fleet significantly to cover entire districts.
Had Kyiv’s authorities made cogeneration a serious priority over the past four years, the crisis in Troieshchyna could likely have been avoided. Experts argue that preventing a repeat next winter now requires at least three concrete steps.
First, dozens of small generation units need to be installed across Troieshchyna’s neighbourhoods, allowing critical infrastructure to function independently of CHP-6. Second, the city must build a system of thermal bypasses so heat can be redirected from reserve mobile boiler units in the event of an аварія. Third, every building should be equipped with individual heat points and battery storage, enabling autonomous heating through internal circulation and preventing pipes from freezing.
All of this would have been far easier had these measures been launched after the harsh winter of 2022–2023. As it stands, by the winter of 2026–2027 Kyiv will be able to decentralise no more than 30 per cent of the critical load once supplied by CHP-6. Even that, however, would be enough to ensure the district does not relive the worst of this winter’s ordeal.
Don’t lament, take action
One point bears repeating: the catastrophe in Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities has a single author. It is Russia, waging a genocidal war against civilians. But this reality has defined life in Ukraine for four years now, and it demands not only condemnation, but preparation.
Some Ukrainian cities are already cited as examples of how to endure winter under sustained bombardment—Zhytomyr, and even Kharkiv, among them. Beyond Ukraine, cities such as Helsinki have shown what long-term investment in cogeneration and resilience can achieve.
There is no value in lamenting lost time. What matters now is action. Kyiv—and towns and cities across Ukraine, regardless of size—must take every possible step to ensure that January 2026 does not repeat itself. And crucially, this is not an impossible task. Even in wartime, the tools to do it exist.
