Ukraine endures widespread blackouts as Russia attacks critical infrastructure

Ukrainians are being forced to cope with widespread emergency blackouts as Russia continued to pound the country’s critical infrastructure over the weekend.

In recent months, Moscow has intensified its attacks in a renewed assault against the country’s energy grid.

Ukrainian energy facilities came under a “massive attack” from Russia on Friday night, the country’s energy ministry said, leaving several workers injured as a result of shelling at one of the facilities.

“The situation in the energy sector remains difficult,” the ministry said in a statement on Saturday.

Russia has damaged or destroyed more than half of Ukraine’s power generation, the president, Volodomyr Zelenksiy, said this month, causing the worst rolling blackouts since the full-scale invasion in 2022.

Ukraine began implementing rolling blackouts on 15 May, with entire districts of the capital disconnected from the power grid to save energy.

In his address on Saturday evening, Zelenskiyurged Ukraine’s western allies to speed up deliveries of air defences.

“Modern air defence systems for Ukraine – such as Patriots, accelerated training of our pilots for F-16s, and most importantly, sufficient range for our weapons – are truly necessary,” he said.

Ukraine has at least four Patriot systems, provided by the US and Germany.

Since Zelenskiy made repeated pleas for additional defence weapons, Germany, Romania and the US have each pledged to send Kyiv a Patriot system.

On Friday, the Netherlands also announced it, in collaboration with another unnamed country, would supply Ukraine with an additional Patriot missile system. This contribution will increase the total number of Patriots to seven, a number Zelenskiy has stated was needed to “secure our main urban agglomerations” against Russian missile attacks.

Until these deliveries arrive, it is expected that systematic attacks on the country’s power infrastructure will continue, forcing residents in Kyiv to improvise.

Oleksandr Babich, a 34-year-old IT worker, said: “I can’t work from my office any more and now roam from cafe to cafe to try to find a quiet spot with electricity.

“At night, I light up candles. Russia is trying to take us back into the stone age.”

Restaurants, hotels, and shopping malls have invested in generators, making their constant loud hum a fixture in the capital.

While the long summer light makes the situation somewhat bearable, Babich said, many fear the colder winter months to come, when electricity demand will spike.

Serhiy Kovalenko, the chief executive of the energy supplier Yasno, said last week that Ukrainians may have electricity for six or seven hours a day in winter if the electricity deficit remains at 35%.

Olha Bondarenko, 46, who runs a smoothie bar in the city centre, said she has adjusted her menu by leaving out fruits that require more time for blending and squeezing other fruits by hand.

“Our blenders consume so much energy,” she said.

“Luckily, our clients are understanding of the situation because everyone is going through the same problems.”

Ukrainian firepower has been somewhat improving since US lawmakers approved a critical military aid package in April. The west’s decisions to allow Ukraine to strike Russian territory with its weaponry has also halted Russia’s push along the north-east front near the city of Kharkiv.

Ukraine has even managed to push Russian positions back, recently recapturing areas south-west of Vovchansk, a prime target of Russia’s advances near Kharkiv.

Lt Col Nazar Voloshyn from the Khortytsia operational strategic group of forces, based in Kharkiv, said in a statement on Telegram on Saturday that his unit has recorded a withdrawal of Russian troops near Liptsi and Tykhe, two districts that have seen some of the heaviest fighting as part of Russia’s Kharkiv offensive.

After delays in delivery and training pilots and ground staff, Ukraine is also expected to receive from the west the first batch of F-16 fighter jets this summer, which it is hoped will protect Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second city, from Russian bombs.

For people in Kharkiv, those deliveries could not come fast enough. On Saturday, a Russian aerial bomb hit a five-storey residential building in the city, killing at least three people and wounding more than 55, officials said.

Currently, Kyiv is allowed to use US weapons only as long as they are limited to shelling Russian forces directly attacking them across the border.

But Ukrainian generals have been pushing for those restrictions to be lifted to enable strikes of particular high-value targets such as airbases and command centres deeper inside Russia using long range weapons which can reach more than 62 miles.

Ukraine, meanwhile, has continued its own strikes on Russian oil refineries, as Kyiv aims to disrupt the infrastructure that supplies the Russian military.

Russian authorities said more than 30 drones were shot down over the country’s western regions overnight into Sunday. Kyiv earlier in the week announced that it struck three oil refineries inside southern Russia.