Key facts
- Rolling power cuts have been in place since October 2026, with some Kyiv families facing outages of up to 20 hours.
- Officials warn life becomes unsustainable for millions of Ukrainians without at least four hours of power a day.
- A recent ballistic missile strike took one of Ukraine's largest power stations completely off line, workers said.
- DTEK CEO Maxim Timchenko said rebuilding the damaged power station would take at least until next summer.
- Timchenko said attacks have doubled in power and scale compared with last year and air defenses cannot cover all critical infrastructure.
- President Volodymyr Zelensky said generating capacity is sufficient but power lines and substations have been hit.
Rolling planned power cuts have been in place across Ukraine since October 2026, introduced earlier than the previous winter and lasting longer, as Russia intensified attacks on the country's energy grid. Ukraine has responded by striking Russian oil refineries. The report was published on November 12, 2026.
Officials are concerned that life will quickly become unsustainable for millions of Ukrainians if power supplies cannot be maintained for at least four hours per day. Some privately warn that point is close, with some families in Kyiv living with outages of up to 20 hours. Nationwide, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians have gone without power in recent weeks, and Kyiv has been worst hit, with metro trains and trolleybuses at times brought to a standstill.
At one of Ukraine's largest power stations, which the report was asked not to name for security reasons, a recent ballistic missile strike buried turbines in rubble and took the site completely off line. Volodymyr Kovalenko, on duty in the control room when the missiles hit at 3am, said: "It was a very powerful attack. We'd never experienced anything like it." He said he is confident the plant can be repaired.
Recovery work is hampered by air raids every 15 to 30 minutes, seven during a four-hour visit, forcing teams to down tools and take cover. Vadym Bobyr, who leads the recovery effort, said: "It's emotionally difficult, because we've already repaired all this, got it running again, and now it's happened all over again." The report said the plant will not be feeding electricity to the national grid before the end of this winter, at least.