Terror, War Crimes, and a Fast Approaching Winter: Energy Infrastructure Attacks in Ukraine
In February 2022, Russian President Vladmir Putin announced a full-scale invasion of Ukraine by air, sea, and land. A month later, 141 out of the 193 UN member states voted in an emergency UN General Assembly session to condemn Russia’s invasion, and demanded it withdraw from Ukraine. Yet, the invasion has continued. It has had devasting effects, with the UN estimating over 14,000 Ukrainian casualties in the first seven months. The conflict shows no near end, and new deadly attacks and tactics by Russia are creating new challenges and crises daily.
Since the beginning of October, Russia commenced a new strategy: attacking Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. Since 10th October, over 200 Russian missiles and kamikaze drones have been directed at crucial elements of the civilian infrastructural system in Ukraine, primarily the electrical power grind. More recently, Russia has also been using Iranian drones, cheaper substitutes than Russian equivalents, to strike energy targets and overall impose fear into civilians. Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, has called these repeated attacks ‘another kind of Russian terrorist attacks’.
Dmytro Sakharuk, Executive Director of Ukraine’s largest private company DTEK, has emphasised that Russia’s targets have been very methodological and carefully selected. The main targets have generally been electrical substations which link different parts of the grid together. Ukrainian power plants have also been targeted, with over 30% of the country’s power stations being destroyed since 10th October. Sakharuk further stated he believed that ‘some military professionals from the energy sector of the Russian Federation’ have assisted the Russian military in these tactics, resulting in attacks which exploit the fragilities in the Ukrainian power system and ultimately cause maximum impact on the country’s grid.
These recent attacks have cut off many cities and towns from electricity and water supplies. This includes in the Zhytomyr region, which sits west of Kyiv, and parts of the city of Dnipro in central Ukraine. Mayor of Zhytomyr, Sergiy Sukhomlyn, stated it has left ‘hospitals working on backup power’. Meanwhile the southern city of Mykolaiv has also experienced power cuts and phone signal disruption, while in the south-eastern city of Nikopol, air raid sirens were switched off from loss of power. Ukrainian national emergency services have said that following 10 days of attacks on energy infrastructure, over 1,100 towns and villages across at least nine regions have been left without power, leading to more than 70 deaths and over 290 people injured.
These attacks have further significant implications, especially the winter months fast approaching. Many Ukrainian cities are heated from centralised plants which need both gas and electricity to function. Amnesty International’s Director for Eastern Europe and Central Asia, Marie Struthers, has hence stated that these attacks therefore ‘deprive civilians in Ukraine of heat, electricity and water as the cold grip of winter approaches,’. A lack of access or fuel, combined with the destruction of houses and damaged infrastructure could become ‘matter of life or death’ over the coming months if people are not able to heat their homes, according to the World Health Organisation. The attacks are bringing war to areas beyond the front line. They are further disrupting transportation, undermining industrial production, and sowing fear and despair among the civilian population. Struthers overall highlights the unlawful nature of targeting civilian infrastructure, and that carrying out such attacks with the aim of terrorising civilians is ultimately a ‘war crime’. Although Moscow has admitted to targeting energy infrastructure, it has denied targeting civilians.
In the longer term, these attacks could have further consequences for Ukraine’s power. For example, if they break the grid into pieces so power cannot flow through some areas of the country, it could potentially lead to parts of the grid having to be shut down. If this happens in any region, it could consequently damage other heavy industry and infrastructure. In attempts to prevent this happening, power authorities have been carrying out intentional blackouts to keep power demand safely below the supply available. This includes power being turned off in key cities for up to four hours at a time. While power companies try to use websites to warn residents of when the power will go off, sometimes the blackouts are still unpredictable.
Through a combination of these factors, Russia’s attacks on energy infrastructure consequently pose a significant risk to creating a new wave of Ukrainian refugees. This is on top of the 7.7 million Ukrainian refugees that have been displaced across Europe because of the conflict, from a population of roughly 44 million people. Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine, Iryna Vereshchuk, has recently announced that Ukrainian refugees should not return before spring next year, telling Ukrainian people ‘if it is possible, stay abroad for the time being’. Vereshchuk has further added that the ‘situation will only get worse’ and ‘the networks will not cope’. Additionally, for many in the centre and east of the country who have recently returned to their homes after previously living abroad or in the west, the infrastructure strikes may soon force them to leave again.
The attacks, however, are proving extremely difficult to defend against. Overall, Ukraine needs better air defence to protect electoral installations and its power grid from Russian attack. Ukraine estimates its defences are successful in shooting down about 50 percent of Russian drones, yet considering the substantial damage caused on the electrical grid so far, more is needed. Such equipment, however, is not cheap. DTEK estimates it would cost around $40 million (£34.6 million). The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has estimated around $3 billion (£2.59 billion) would be needed to ensure Ukraine survives the next year. If Russia’s bombardment and attacks intensify, this could reach around $5 billion (£4.32 billion).
While Ukraine’s backers in both Europe and Asia have promised to send more powerful air defence systems, equipment and assistance to help rebuild critical infrastructure, many of the air-defence systems are complicated to use, need extensive training, and take significant time to arrive. Overall, Ukraine is going to need continued support, resources and funds from the international community to face these increasing threats, and to overall protect and support its civilian populations through the winter and the remainder of the war.
Image courtesy of Міністерство внутрішніх справ України via Wikimedia, ©2022, some rights reserved.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the wider St Andrews Foreign Affairs Review team.
