Hits on energy facilities rise by 36% in a year

Semen Ruban - 10 July, 15:05

The number of hits on Ukraine’s energy facilities has risen by 36%. Photo: Getty Images

Russia has started attacking Ukraine's energy facilities with 20-25 drones simultaneously, while the number of hits in 2026 has risen by 36% compared to the first half of 2025.

Source: Vitalii Zaichenko, Chairman of the Board of Ukrenergo, Ukraine's state-owned electricity transmission operator, at the Decentralised Generation in Ukraine 2.0 forum, as reported by Ukrinform, a Ukrainian news agency

Details: Zaichenko said the number of drones launched by Russian forces against a single energy facility has risen from 3-4 at the beginning of the full-scale war to 20-25 in a single attack.

Russia also carried out complex attacks, trying to destroy both electricity generation and transmission simultaneously.

Quote: "Ukrenergo's losses alone have already approached UAH 90 billion (US$2 billion). The number of hits is rising, especially this year, by 36% compared to the first half of last year."

More details: Overall, the company lost around UAH 4 billion (almost US$90 million) in revenue from the beginning of 2026. Zaichenko said this is the reason for revising the transmission and dispatch tariffs.

He added that Ukraine has lost around 50% of its electricity generation capacity, with flexible generation suffering the most damage.

Zaichenko also spoke about the scale of power outages caused by Russian attacks. In January, an average of 6.1 million metering points were without power simultaneously as a result of Russian large-scale attacks, rising to 6.5 million in February and 3.8 million in March.

Quote: "The actual number of people left without electricity was higher."

More details: Zaichenko said the highest number of consumers without power at the same time was recorded on 8 February, at more than 12 million.

Background:

On 9 July, the Cabinet of Ministers (Ukrainian government) expanded an experimental project on implementing oblast resilience plans to cover critical infrastructure operators.
Energy companies such as Naftogaz of Ukraine (Ukraine's national oil and gas company), Gas Transmission System Operator of Ukraine (Ukraine's gas transmission operator) and Ukrenergo will now be able to implement their measures under simplified procedures.

Subscribe on Patreon to back our journalism long-term.