Russia's Winter Bombardment Campaign of Ukraine Has Failed

Spring is beginning to arrive in Ukraine. The worst of the winter weather is over. And with it, the worst of Russia's attempt to freeze Ukrainians into submission has failed, like so many of its other military attempts.

Through a combination of heroic energy repair efforts despite Russian attacks on civilian energy workers, additional electrical power provided by Poland and Romania, as well as thousands of portable generators - many provided by Norway, Japan and other countries - the Ukrainians have largely restored their power grid and have again defeated Putin's efforts to defeat them. JL

Stefan Korshak reports in the Kyiv Post:

The Russian bid to defeat Ukraine by destroying power grid and heating infrastructure in the middle of winter and forcing Ukrainians to suffer sub-zero temperatures in unheated homes has failed. At the height of the Russian bombardment, in early February, Ukrainian power generation had fallen to 23% of normal. Blackouts and electricity rationing imposed nationwide left consumers with the lights off 8-12 hours a day. In the worst-hit cities, Kyiv and Kharkiv, some were without power for 24-36 hours. Yet, in a little more than two weeks, Ukrainian generation capacity had rebounded to 73% of normal. The heroes were field maintenance teams: dispatchers, truck drivers, crane operators and supply chain managers repairing power line breaks and damaged equipment. Poland Romania surged power to Ukraine and other countries sent portable generators which provided 25% of electricity. 

A Russian bid to defeat Ukraine by destroying power grid and heating infrastructure in the middle of winter and forcing Ukrainians to suffer sub-zero temperatures in unheated homes without electricity has failed. Spring has arrived in Ukraine, the lights are on across the country and Ukrainian defiance is undimmed as well.

The Russian Federation, led by authoritarian President Vladimir Putin, kicked off a strategic bombardment operation with the objective of demolishing Ukraine’s ability to generate electricity and keep homes and businesses cold in mid-December. The strikes, aiming to force Ukraine to accept Russian peace terms by making Ukraine’s civilian population miserable, alternated between “small” daily attacks usually of 80-100 kamikaze drones accompanied by one or two missiles, and major air assaults with 300-500 drones and 20-40 missiles, taking place every five to seven days. 

Each attack drone carried a warhead with 50-100 kilograms of high explosive sufficient to demolish a few apartments or knock offline a single power transformer station. Each missile carried a warhead with between 500-1,000 kilograms of high explosives, sufficient to leveling two or three stories of an apartment building and everyone in it, or to smash beyond replacement a generator turbine at a city power plant.

 

Practically every long-range weapon in the Kremlin arsenal was employed: ground-launched ballistic missiles, air-dropped “aeroballistic” missiles, cruise missiles fired from warships, bombers and giant trucks, hypersonic missiles, kamikaze drones made in Iran, and kamikaze drones made in Russia under Iranian license.

 

Russian propagandist Vladimir Solovyov, during a Dec. 7 broadcast on the national Rossiya-1 television channel, said the strikes would “turn off the lights for good and make them [Ukrainians] freeze in the dark this winter…[and] break the will of the Ukrainian people.”

In total, from December 2025 to February 2026, Russia launched 14 major attacks and at least 45 smaller ones at Ukraine, the most massive taking place on Dec. 6, with 704 Russian weapons violating Ukrainian airspace, including 51 missiles. Most major Ukrainian cities were hit, particularly northeastern Kharkiv and southern Dnipro and Odesa, but the capital Kyiv was overwhelmingly the main Russian target. 

“The Russians had a clear goal; they wanted to destroy our power grid and heating infrastructure, and they made significant progress in that process,” said Kyrylo Budanov, Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine [and former chief of Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, HUR] in a Feb. 28 interview with TSN television.

Ukrainian regions near or bordering Russia faced, in addition, daily attacks by glide bombs dropped by Russian combat aircraft flying outside the range of Ukrainian air defenses. Navigating mostly by inertia and fairly easily jammed, the glide bombs were the most inaccurate weapon used by Russia in the attacks, but the explosive payload – up to three tons of high explosive – meant a precise hit wasn’t always needed.

Ukraine’s air defenses went into the battle handicapped by shortages of modern air-to-air missiles launched by fighter jets, and interceptor missiles fired by ground launchers, because those weapons were made in the US, and White House peacemaking tacticians were hoping air defense ammunition shortages might pressure Ukraine into a capitulation peace agreement with Russia. 

America’s throttling of PAC-3 missile deliveries to Ukraine was particularly damaging because that was the only weapon in the Ukrainian inventory capable of shooting down a Russian ballistic missile.

Cut off from advanced air defense weapons in sufficient quantities, Ukraine’s air defense command turned to alternatives: machine guns mounted on pickup trucks, jammers around key infrastructure, reinforced concrete blocks armoring power transformers, door gunners in intercepting helicopter gunships, and above all, domestically developed interceptor drones designed to blow up the Russian drones by ramming them. Aside from ballistic missiles, over the course of the bombardment, Ukrainian air defenses managed to shoot down around 80% of all incoming weapons, and on some nights it was above 90%.

According to statistics released by DTEK on March 1, at the height of the Russian bombardment, in early February, Ukrainian power generation capacity had fallen to about 23% of normal capacity. Forced blackouts and electricity rationing imposed nationwide left most consumers with the lights off 8-12 hours a day. In the worst-hit cities, Kyiv and Kharkiv, some districts were without power for 24-36 hours. 

Yet, in a little more than two weeks, by Feb. 24, Ukrainian generation capacity had vigorously rebounded to 73% of normal volumes, and DTEK was delivering continuous power almost nationwide.

The acknowledged engineers and heroes of that national recovery and repair effort – in Ukraine considered a near-miracle – were thousands of police, firemen and ambulance crews responding to the scene of the Russian strikes, and the field maintenance teams, with dispatchers, truck drivers, crane operators and supply chain managers arriving next to repair power line breaks and damaged equipment faster than the Russian military could inflict more. Day after day, high-voltage linemen climbed towers to string new cable in temperatures 20 degrees below zero Celsius.

Crews on the ground faced a different threat: the Russian “double-tap” tactic of hitting a site already hit with another missile, to injure or kill emergency response personnel and power company employees. On Feb. 1, a Russian drone struck a bus carrying DTEK staff en route to a power plant and adjacent coal mine near the city of Dnipro, killing 12 and injuring 16 workers.

In January alone, per news reports, 161 Ukrainian civilians were killed and 757 injured nationwide by Russian long-range weapons. But throughout the bombardment, despite the danger and discomfort, public dissent was practically non-existent.

 

“Society, notwithstanding all its variety, it held out,” Budanov said. “We didn’t have mass protests about blackouts, which was what the Russian Federation was really depending on. There weren’t any serious incidents of social tension against the authorities in government. Everyone understands that the reason the lights aren’t on in a person’s house, it’s missile strikes, with missiles launched from Russian Federation territory. Here, they [the Kremlin] just calculated wrong.”

Also important were quick decisions by Poland and Romania to surge electricity generation to add capacity to Ukraine’s grid. Most of those exports went directly to major consumers like Ukrainian industry and the national railroad, or to power generation inside Ukraine. 

Poland also led an international effort to ship portable generators into Ukraine, sending 379 from government strategic reserves, 447 via EU funds, along with city-level donations, like 90 donated by Warsaw to Kyiv in January. The EU, Germany, France, Italy, Netherlands, Finland, Switzerland, Spain, and Norway sent generators and other help ranging from cogeneration units and spare parts to construction materials and protective gear for field workers. Even Japan was a donor.

 

Power generation capacity in the hands of individual Ukrainians or small businesses was another pillar of Ukrainian energy resilience. According to a March 1 DTEK estimate, as much as 5-6 GW of daily power consumption in Ukraine – or about 20-25% of total national winter daily demand – was generated by smaller generators powered by gas, diesel, gasoline, or by wind or solar, or just run off power storage devices.

“By deploying portable generation, Ukraine is transitioning from a highly centralized vulnerable model to a distributed grid architecture that is more resilient,” a March 2 analysis published by research group RFU news said. “This makes them significantly more difficult to disable with attacks, and far harder to disrupt, which will protect Ukraine against future blackouts.”

Ukraine’s Air Force on Monday summed up the campaign in an openly triumphant Monday statement:

“Ukraine’s skies have stood firm. The energy system has been preserved thanks to the professionalism of the anti-aircraft missile troops, mobile fire groups, radio engineering troops and aviation….At the same time, we thank every power engineer and repair crew who, under fire, restored the lights and kept the power grid alive…We know that the enemy is preparing new attacks, but every unit of our air defense is on full combat readiness…We fought! We survived! We will win!”

In a business/residential district near Kyiv’s Olympic Stadium on Thursday, a Kyiv Post reporter observed entire blocks of storefront including high-end restaurants and humble food shops, during a blackout, each operating on its own generator. On Feb. 28 in Kyiv’s Golden Gate neighborhood, a scheduled blackout shut down power in a building with a major press conference in progress: a generator kicked in and light was restored in less than a minute, the reporter saw.

“I have giant gratitude to our entire Ukrainian people. That they bore the stress and are patient. I already can say they have come through the hard part. In principle, it’s already spring,” Budanov said.