Every year with the onset of autumn, the same question appears: will the energy system hold out? This winter, the answer is more complex than "yes" or "no." Because both sides of the equation have changed — both the resilience of the infrastructure and the nature of the threat.
What changed in the energy sector
According to Stanislav Ignatyev, energy expert at the Ukrainian Institute of the Future, Ukraine essentially began preparing for the winter season in the summer — decentralization of generation, backup sources, repair of damaged nodes. The government approved a separate action plan for stable electricity supply for the autumn-winter period of 2025/26, which provides for a more even distribution of load and the involvement of backup capacities.
At the same time, according to the Ministry of Energy, the need to restore generation remains critical: over 10 GW of capacity has not been restored yet, and approximately 3 GW of new decentralized systems are still needed. Even taking into account imports and solar generation, the system remains vulnerable to deficits on peak frost days.
"There is light for everyone, the energy system is balanced, there are no blackouts" — but that is the summer picture. Winter is a different stress test.
Oleksandr Kovalenko, military-political analyst of the "Information Resistance" group
New tactics: not more powerful, but smarter
The main change on Russia's side is not just the quantity of missiles, but the method of their application. According to Kovalenko's assessment, the adversary perfected the system of combined attacks in the second half of 2025: simultaneous use of kamikaze drones, cruise missiles with complex trajectories, and high-speed ballistics — to overload air defense radar systems.
The scale of such waves — up to 500+ unmanned vehicles and several dozen missiles — allows them to be repeated approximately once a week or once every ten days. According to GUR data, the pace of Russian military-industrial production allows the supply of approximately 60 Iskander ballistic missiles per month. ISW confirms: current rates of Russian ballistic production already exceed the rate of production of American Patriot interceptor missiles.
Why ballistics became the main tool
A separate problem has become delayed warning. As Kovalenko explains, a massive launch is detected by infrared observation satellites, and the takeoff of Tu-95MS carrier aircraft is tracked by AWACS. However, individual ballistic launches are increasingly going undetected — they have become the tool for precision strikes on cities in 2025–2026: air raid sirens are activated only after explosions.
For energy infrastructure, this means minimal time to preventively shut down sensitive equipment — which means greater risk of irreversible damage to transformer nodes.
What Ukraine is actually preparing
- Deployment of decentralized generation sources — so that a precision strike does not extinguish an entire region
- Backup of critical nodes and mobile transformer substations
- Cabinet actions to redistribute load during peak hours
- Personal preparedness of the population: charged power banks, water supply, autonomous heating
Kovalenko emphasizes separately: we are not talking about a blackout as such, but about a controlled deficit — but only if new strikes do not simultaneously take several large nodes out of service.
The forecast depends on one specific factor: whether Ukraine will receive by December a sufficient supply of interceptor missiles for Patriot systems — if not, combined attacks in winter will have a significantly higher breakthrough percentage, and then the resilience that was built over a year could be destroyed in a few nights.
