In the Ukrainian public sphere, it’s hard to find a spokesperson right now who isn’t talking about the approach of yet another extremely harsh winter. Such warnings only heighten the general sense of anxiety. However, what sets the upcoming cold season apart from previous ones is that the rhetoric isn’t limited to mere defense and calls to “get ready.” More precisely, it isn’t limited to just those things.
At the same time, another argument is being voiced more and more frequently: Kyiv will respond in kind—or at least try to do so. Back in June, former Defense Minister adviser Serhiy “Flash” Beskrestnov put it bluntly: he said that if the war continues, not only Ukraine but also a significant portion of Russia’s population would be left without electricity and heat.
But does Ukraine really have the resources to plunge Russian regions into cold and darkness? And most importantly—can such an approach bring the war closer to an end, when Ukraine’s own experience shows that the cold doesn’t force anyone to surrender? UA.News political analyst Mykyta Trachuk, together with experts, examined the issue.
Why Russia’s Energy Sector Is at Greater Risk Than It Seems
To avoid harboring false hopes, we must acknowledge right away: Ukraine cannot bring about a full-scale blackout across all of Russia. The aggressor country is dozens of times larger; its unified power grid has enormous reserves of resilience and backup capacity, and many key nodes are located beyond the reach of Ukrainian drones. Kyiv itself has repeatedly learned that even striking targets in the Moscow region requires complex planning, and the vast majority of drones simply cannot reach the Russian capital, as they are shot down by air defense systems. To expect that Moscow or a dozen cities with populations over a million would be left without power and heat for days, let alone weeks, is—for now—the stuff of science fiction, and unscientific at that.
However, the issue at hand is not so much a total collapse as it is selective, localized pressure, which, if scaled appropriately, could prove to be extremely painful. And this is where we encounter a significant asymmetry in defense capabilities.
Over the years of massive shelling,
Ukraine has managed to learn, at least to some extent, how to protect its critical infrastructure. Some of the power generation facilities, particularly in Kharkiv, have been moved underground. Above-ground power facilities are shielded with gabions, sandbags, and in some cases concrete structures or even simple iron grates to provide at least some protection against debris. That is precisely why the Russians are often forced to expend dozens of missiles and drones on a single target, and the results are far from always justifying the cost.
In contrast, no similar large-scale, systematic engineering protection efforts have been observed in Russia. This means that, with an equal number of strike assets, the Ukrainian side currently has a higher strike efficiency against unprotected targets.
If the hundreds or even thousands of UAVs currently striking oil depots and military warehouses were directed at exposed distribution facilities, thermal power plants, and key substations in Russia’s rear area, the consequences could be far more severe than we are accustomed to thinking. In the Russian context, where central heating relies on thermal power plants located within urban areas, and winters are much harsher than in most of Ukraine, the failure of several key facilities during peak cold spells could trigger a cascade of utility failures.
And this process has already begun. Ukraine is currently successfully “cutting off” entire districts of Belgorod, Kursk, and other border cities, while also regularly striking the energy infrastructure of the occupied territories, including Crimea. It is likely that the area of greatest impact will be located within this radius—roughly several hundred kilometers from the front line. Creating localized but prolonged outages, leaving hundreds of thousands of people without electricity and heat, is a task that, while complex, is technically achievable. However, extending this effect to all of Russia, where major power generation hubs are located, is unlikely to succeed: there would be neither enough weapons nor the capability to overcome air defense systems.
Mirroring That Does Not Bring Peace
The far more important question is not “is it possible?” but “to what end?” If we set aside all the narratives and answer the question at its core, we arrive at an uncomfortable but honest conclusion: this strategy does not work at all in a political sense, and Ukraine is living proof of that.
Russia has been trying to “freeze everything out” here for many winters in a row. Each winter has been worse than the last. The goal of these attacks, aside from being purely terrorist in nature, was to provoke social unrest and street pressure that would supposedly force the government to capitulate. That did not happen. Instead, the strikes on civilian energy infrastructure were rightly classified as war crimes, and the level of hatred toward the aggressor has only increased tenfold. When a person is freezing without electricity in a cold apartment because of incoming missiles, they get angry at those who launched those missiles, rather than analyzing some political or diplomatic circumstances.
Now Kyiv plans to do the same to the Russians. Based on the universal logic of mass psychology, the result will be a mirror image—but not in the sense they intended.
Russian society, which is currently largely either apathetic or passively supportive of the war, will receive a powerful impetus toward consolidation. Whether it’s a destroyed thermal power plant in Belgorod, a blacked-out district in Kursk—or even the whole of Moscow without power—none of this will trigger reflection on the question, “Who started the war, and why are they continuing it?” Instead, they will trigger the classic mechanism of psychological self-defense: “Our enemies are bombing us—we must unite.” Kremlin propaganda will instantly turn any strikes into proof of Ukraine’s “terrorist nature” and call for even more sanctions and bombing of the “fascist regime in Kyiv.” From a military-technical standpoint, an exchange of strikes on energy infrastructure is a zero-sum game in which both sides simply lose.
Why, then, is this idea so prominently on the Ukrainian agenda? The answer lies, once again, in the political and psychological realm. As of late summer 2026, the war of attrition is in a phase of protracted, radical escalation. Neither side is losing nor winning. There is absolutely no prospect of negotiations. The next winter—the harshest in history—is drawing ever closer. Apathy is growing in society; nearly 100% of the population is likely suffering from some form of PTSD; strategic uncertainty reigns everywhere, and the daily news reads like a digest of the Apocalypse: so many explosions, so much burned and destroyed, so many wounded, and so many dead.
And so, in this situation, when the traditional tools—military operations on the front lines and diplomacy—fail to produce results, the only possible course of action emerges: to strike back just as chaotically with whatever means are available. Essentially, this is a strategy of desperation. When all other arguments have been exhausted and there’s no hope for negotiations, the only option left is a symmetrical response: you terrorize us, we terrorize you. And so on, ad infinitum.
The calculation here does not rely on Putin’s capitulation (he will always have both light and heat), but on the fact that ordinary Russians will suffer so much that they will somehow force their government to end the war. But there’s really no logic to this at all. First, the Russian Federation’s exact same strategy toward Ukraine hasn’t worked for four years now—and it won’t work in another four years either. Second, for Putin’s system, the well-being of the population has, to put it mildly, never been a top priority. Third, the official Ukrainian discourse is dominated by a narrative portraying Russians as a nation with a “genetic code of slavery”—so how can one logically expect a “slave people” to somehow rise up against the authorities?
Expert
Opinions
Military expert Oleg Zhdanov believes that a harsh winter awaits not only Ukraine. Today, according to Zhdanov, Kyiv can already compete with Moscow on equal footing when it comes to strikes against the energy sector.
“In purely quantitative terms, the Russian Federation has more air defense systems than we do, but in terms of quality, it has fewer. The point is that they simply cannot physically cover the entire territory of the Russian Federation, and Russia’s strategic depth becomes its own trap. However, we currently have nothing but drones, so strikes against Russia’s energy infrastructure will be a more challenging task for us in terms of weaponry—unfortunately. After all, a drone’s payload isn’t very large, ranging from 50 to 100 kg. So we’d need far more of these UAVs than we would missiles—for example, ones with a 500-kg warhead. We’ve seen what a single “Iskander” can do to a logistics or energy facility. Now imagine what our equivalent would do to a Russian substation. It simply wouldn’t be repairable. But since we don’t have such capabilities yet, we’ll have to overload Russia’s air defense system every time, whatever form it takes. In other words, the emphasis here must be on the sheer number of drones launched,” says Oleg Zhdanov.
Energy expert Oleg Popenko is confident that we have various options. We can strike not only—and not so much—exclusively at thermal power plants in Russia. At the same time, according to the expert, the Russians have managed to better prepare for such attacks.
“We can continue to strike the same oil refineries, as is being done now, as well as distribution stations and hubs—in other words, the options are completely different. It all depends on the strategy the military chooses. In principle, Ukraine has already struck Russia’s energy infrastructure on multiple occasions and cut off power to entire cities—such as Belgorod or other border regions. The Russians, by the way, implemented defenses against drones targeting their power generation facilities a long time ago. They’re already protected against many types of Ukrainian drone attacks. There are special cables strung over power generation facilities, gas stations, and so on. But this, I’ll repeat, is primarily anti-drone protection. It’s practically impossible to protect all power generation facilities from every possible attack. But when it comes to preparing defenses for thermal power plants, oil depots, and everything else—they began setting up these defenses much earlier. I was already talking on the air several years ago about the need to protect Ukrainian energy facilities, back when the Russians were already doing so. But here, it’s only now that the new Prime Minister Koretsky is starting to talk about anti-drone protection and everything else,” noted Oleg Popenko.
Political analyst and director of the Ukrainian Institute of Politics Ruslan Bortnik is confident that that Russian energy infrastructure will be a priority target for Ukrainian strikes this winter—especially after the campaign of attacks on Russian logistics and marketplaces like Wildberries or Ozon comes to an end. At the same time, the expert expects that all of this will resemble a knife fight in a dark alley.
“Many Russian cities and regions will suffer this winter from a lack of heating and/or electricity. And given Russia’s climate, it’s clear that this could trigger additional humanitarian and sociopolitical crises in the Russian Federation. I don’t think there will be any restrictions on these strikes from the U.S. or anyone else. And this will be further used as leverage in negotiations with Russia to pressure it into abandoning the ultimatums it previously issued to both Ukraine and the West. So there will be no restrictions this winter—but don’t expect any special assistance either. Tomahawk missiles won’t be deployed in Ukraine, and there will also be a problem with the Patriot system. And this winter will be like a knife fight in a dark alley, where no one has any protection—after all, neither Russia can fully defend its own territory, nor can we, for that matter. So it will be a sort of “back-alley brawl,” banking on the fact that you’ll strike a jugular vein and your opponent will bleed out. “It will be an extremely difficult winter,” noted Ruslan Bortnik.
In
summary, we are facing a rather tragic crossroads. Yes, Ukrainian UAVs have a real chance of seriously disrupting life for residents of some Russian regions and occupied territories. But turning this into a massive collapse or forcing cities like Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kazan, or Omsk to freeze is very, very unlikely. And even if that were to succeed, there is still no reason to believe that ordinary Russians suffering from the cold would change Putin’s political will. Ukraine has proven this itself: terror against civilians makes no sense; it simply does not work as a political lever of influence on those in power. The same will be true in the case of a winter in Russia.
That is precisely why the “energy war” is not a “strategy to coerce peace.” It is rather an act of desperation, in which only ordinary people lose.
