Heating season has officially begun as Russia plunges Kyiv into darkness with one of the largest drone and missiles attacks on power assets of the war.
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko switched on the capital's central heating on October 16 amidst Russian strikes on what remains of the capital’s generation capacity that forced emergency blackouts across the city.
Russia hit 15 energy sites in massive strike, using hundreds of high powered drones and dozens of missiles.
“On the eve, the Russians delivered one of their largest strikes against Ukrainian energy: more than 15 critical electricity generation and energy transmission facilities in various regions of Ukraine were attacked,” Zelensky stated. The president reported that emergency restoration operations are underway across the country but Russia has been destroying Ukraine’s power plants fasted than the government can fix them. The most severe disruptions to municipal electricity networks were recorded in northwestern and central urban centres including, Lutsk, Rivne, Zhytomyr, Vinnytsia, Shepetivka, Slavuta, and Netishyn, the Kyiv Post reports.
From what is still functioning, heat is going first to schools, hospitals and kindergartens. Klitschko said the decision was forced by the "extreme conditions" created by constant bombardment. Two left-bank districts, Dniprovskyi and Darnytskyi, will stay without central heating for now because of "significant damage" to a power facility serving them. Private grid operator DTEK warned that its outage schedules no longer applied during emergency cuts.
Russia’s winter campaign underway
Russian President Vladimir Putin is preparing to repeat his attempt to freeze Ukraine into submission, and has spent the last year preparing for the attack.
Ballistic missile production has accelerated, up by 40% y/y according to reports, to around 50 missiles per month. In addition, the Kremlin has stockpiled some 130 missiles in preparation and is buying additional ballistic missiles from its CRINK (China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea) partner North Korea.
In addition it has poured money into the production and innovation of a new class of jet-powered “cruise missile-lite” Geran-5 and the cheap Banderol missile, which together make this winter's campaign potentially far worse than the last one. In new unsettling news, it was reported at the weekend that a new variant of the Geran-5 was used at the weekend that travels at over 800km/h – twice its previous speeds – that make them almost impossible for the latest Ukrainian jet-powered interceptor drones to bring them down, leaving Ukraine virtually defenceless to both Russian missiles and its best drones.
According to Ukraine's Main Directorate of Intelligence (HUR), an intercepted Russian plan shows that Moscow needs 70 ballistic missiles, 720 long-range drones and 150 guided bombs to cut Kyiv, Kharkiv and Odesa off from power, heat and water completely, about as many as get through Ukraine's air defences in a month, The New York Times reported. If the plan works, the three cities would lose 90% of their electricity and heating, the paper said.
Russia has already hit the three plants that keep Kyiv warm. Before the war the capital's three combined heat and power (CHP) plants covered about three quarters of its winter power needs, some 1.3 GW, but strikes had cut that to about 500 MW by the autumn, Tymofiy Mylovanov, rector of the Kyiv School of Economics (KSE) and former economics minister said in a social media post. Russia hit all three with ballistic missiles in the night of October 13-14, Prime Minister Serhii Koretskyi confirmed, and Ukraine shot down only four of the 39 ballistic missiles fired that night.
"Overnight, the Russians deployed 39 ballistic missiles and more than 120 strike drones and loitering munitions against our energy and critical infrastructure in Kyiv, Kyiv Oblast, and Kharkiv," Zelenskiy reported on October 14, adding that 600,000 people were left without power. By October 15 all three plants were out of service, leaving Kyiv dependent on electricity transmitted from other regions.
No water, substations targeted
Water is the next weak point. Water pumping depends on power, and Russia is also targeting the Bortnychi wastewater treatment plant, the capital's only water facility, The Times reports. A long cut in power in deep frost forces utilities to drain the heating system or risk the pipes freezing and bursting, damage that takes months to repair: when water was not drained in time during a freeze in January, several hundred Kyiv apartment buildings suffered critical damage to their heating systems, energy expert Oleh Popenko told Hvylya.
Moscow is also changing what it aims at as its campaign expands to make Ukraine’s biggest cities uninhabitable. Rather than the nuclear plants themselves, it is increasingly hitting the substations and transmission links that carry their power to towns and cities, which can leave nuclear electricity stranded even while the reactors run, as a former nuclear regulator warned this week. The ultra-high voltage 750kV substations that hold the grid together are particularly vulnerable and if destroyed can plunge entire regions into darkness. So far, Russia has refrained from hitting the 750kV substations, with a few exceptions, but once the snows arrive in the next two months that is likely to change, say experts.
Ukraine had about 54.5 GW of generating capacity before the full-scale invasion, but that had been reduced to about 12 GW by the summer on the government's own figures, leaving a deficit of 5-6 GW against demand before the heating season even began. That gap is now widening.
The blackouts are spreading beyond the capital. DTEK imposed emergency cuts in the Bucha, Obukhiv and Fastiv districts of Kyiv region on October 16, a drone attack left the western city of Lutsk without power the same day, and an overnight attack left Vinnytsia without electricity on October 17, Ukrainska Pravda reported.
Klitschko advised residents with family or friends outside the city to consider leaving for the winter on October 8, but stopped short of ordering an evacuation, which he called "Putin's goal", Meduza reported. "Today the issue is survival," he said. Those who can are going: "Everyone seems to know someone who has left or is planning to leave," The Times reported from Kyiv at the weekend.
Out of interceptors
Ukraine ran out of Patriot missiles altogether on October 15, CNN reported, leaving it with no defence against ballistic missiles, after months of warnings that its interceptor missiles run dry.
That happens most months, according to Christopher Miller, the Financial Times' Ukraine correspondent. "The US sends shipments of Pac-2 and Pac-3 interceptors to Kyiv in small batches, sometimes ~5-15 at a time, as they are produced. So we could write pretty much every month, 'Ukraine is out of Patriot missiles,' because after the first Russian attacks each month it's often the case," Miller said on X.
With rapidly dwindling air defence capabilities, Zelenskiy has recently started to sound increasingly desperate as he scours the world for more Patriot interceptor ammo. He repeated calls for US and EU partners to donate 300 interceptor missiles that he says will allow Ukraine to get through the winter, but little help has been offered. Greece and Spain, which both have enough in stock to meet Zelenskiy demand, both refused to part with their interceptors this month. Greece holds more than 200 PAC-2 missiles that are close to the end of their guaranteed service life, while Spain has sent Ukraine only five – enough for a few hours protection.
Zelenskiy directly appealed to US President Donald Trump in July for 300 missiles, but after the disastrous Iranian war campaign, the US stocks are down to around 600 interceptors, according to some estimates and the US is also reluctant to dig into what it has left.
In a compromise Trump promised to send "some" interceptors every month, but it appears he has only dedicated what is coming off the production lines and won’t touch his strategic stockpile. Trump specifically didn’t specify how many “some” missiles are.
He also offered Kyiv a licence to make its own Patriots, but that offer was rescinded after US defence companies refused, afraid of losing their business to Ukraine. "We have Patriots, but we don't have that many. We need them for ourselves too," he said at the time.
The US fired about 65% of its pre-war Patriot inventory in the war with Iran in just the first few weeks and has fewer than 1,000 interceptors left, the Center for Strategic and International Studies estimates. The US had already burned through half its Patriot stocks by early summer.
Zelenskiy asked EU leaders for at least €70bn ($78bn) more for next year, to pay for defence, weapons and resilience, at the Brussels summit that ended on October 16.
Faster drones
Russia has also pulled ahead again in the drone arms race. Ukraine had started mass-producing interceptor drones with a top speed of up to 465 km/h, fast enough to catch the Geran-5, whose cruising speed Ukrainian engineers had put at about 350-400 km/h, and hunt it from behind.
Ukrainian military channels reported that Geran-5s reached 700-800 km/h as they crossed air-defence zones on October 16, according to Russian milblogger Yuri Podolyaka, who said Russian engineers appeared to be using the engine's maximum "boost" mode to outrun pursuers.
The Air Force figures for October 16 paint a grim picture of the speed of Russia’s escalating winter campaign. Of the 315 drones Russia launched between 07:00 and 19:00 that day, 78 were jet-powered, and air defences downed 49 of those, or 63%, against 86% of the slower propeller-driven drones, the Air Force said. Russia also fired 15 S-8000 Banderol drone-launched cruise missiles, of which nine were downed.
Russia now appears to be sending mainly jet drones. "Currently, at the time of writing, there are only Geran-4/5 jet-drones detected in Ukrainian airspace. Not a single Geran-2 drone is in the air right now," the open-source analyst AMK Mapping said on X on October 16.
The heavy missiles have come back too as the winter campaign gets under way, which are detailed in IntelliNews infographic guide to Russia and Ukraine’s missile and drone arsenals.
Overnight on October 16-17 Russia fired Iskander-M or North Korean KN-23 ballistic missiles, Kh-22/32 cruise missiles, four Kalibr cruise missiles and 332 drones, 31 of them jet-powered; the Air Force reported 293 downed, including all four Kalibrs, and hits at 22 locations, but did not report downing any of the ballistic missiles, Ukrainska Pravda reported.
What is left of the grid
IntelliNews’ Missile War Monitor's ledger of Russian strikes records the main generating plants hit since August. Most operators no longer publish what their plants can still produce, so the table gives each plant's nameplate capacity and the last reported damage, not its current output.
|
Plant |
Region |
Nameplate capacity |
Latest reported hit |
Reported damage |
|
Kyiv's three CHPs (CHP-4 Darnytsia, CHP-5, CHP-6) |
Kyiv |
about 1.3 GW pre-war; about 500 MW by autumn (Mylovanov) |
October 13-14, 2026 |
All three hit; CHP-4 took a direct hit, damage “quite serious” (Klitschko); all out of service by October 15 (The Times, citing local media) |
|
Kharkiv CHP-5 |
Kharkiv |
540 MW |
October 11, 2026 |
Hit as Trump announced an energy ceasefire; "there was a hit there and there is destruction" (Mayor Ihor Terekhov). No output data |
|
Trypillia thermal power plant (Centrenergo) |
Kyiv region |
1,800 MW |
September 30, 2026 |
Generating equipment damaged; extent withheld for security reasons (Centrenergo) |
|
Kryvyi Rih thermal power plant (DTEK) |
Dnipropetrovsk region |
2,820 MW |
August 18, 2026 |
Damaged beyond the ability to generate |
|
Kherson CHP |
Kherson |
not published |
August 26-27, 2026 |
All remaining generating equipment destroyed by five guided bombs |
|
Kremenchuk hydroelectric plant |
Poltava region |
700 MW |
October 7, 2026 |
Russian media claim only; no Ukrainian confirmation |
|
Unnamed 36.6 MW plant |
Sumy region |
36.6 MW |
September 14, 2026 |
Destroyed, per an association of private power producers |
Main power plants hit since August 2026. Sources: IntelliNews Missile War Monitor ledger of Russian strikes; capacities are nameplate figures, not current output.
Only a rough estimate of what remains online is possible. The government said in August that 15 GW was available, counting cogeneration and imports, against a winter peak of about 18 GW, and aimed to raise it to 19.6 GW by November 1.
The plants in the table that have stopped generating since then — Kryvyi Rih, Kyiv’s CHPs and Kharkiv CHP-5 — have nameplate capacity of about 4.7 GW (2,820 MW + about 1,300 MW + 540 MW). This is not a measure of output lost: none was running at full capacity before it was hit, and the August figure includes imports and cogeneration.
"Bombing campaigns have rarely forced a country to surrender: not in Vietnam, not in the Gulf, not in Iran," Mylovanov wrote. The intercepted plan suggests Moscow intends to test that.