Energy Terror as a Strategy: What the Massive Attack of December 27 Revealed

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The night of December 27 became yet another confirmation that for Russia, the war against Ukraine has long gone beyond battlefield operations and turned into a deliberate campaign of energy and civilian terror. The massive strike on electricity generation, transmission, and distribution facilities was neither random nor a response to frontline developments. It was a coldly calculated blow aimed at winter, cities, and people.

According to data presented during a briefing by Acting Minister of Energy of Ukraine Artem Nekrasov, the enemy used nearly 500 strike drones and around 40 missiles, including aeroballistic “Kinzhal” missiles. The attacks continued throughout the day. Kyiv, Kyiv region, and other parts of the country came under fire.

This was not a military operation in any classical sense. It was an attempt to break the rear through infrastructure, to turn cold, darkness, and instability into part of everyday life.

The consequences were immediate. Substations, overhead power lines, and generation facilities were damaged, forcing energy workers to introduce emergency power outages in the capital and the region. As of 15:00, more than 500,000 consumers in Kyiv and Kyiv region were left without electricity, while over 22,000 consumers in Chernihiv region were also without power. In most regions of Ukraine, scheduled hourly outages and capacity restrictions for industry and business remained in effect.

But the true scale of the strike is measured not only in reports and figures. According to Kyiv Mayor Vitalii Klychko, nearly one third of the capital was left without heat supply. More than 2,600 residential buildings, 187 kindergartens, 138 schools, and 22 social institutions were left without centralized heating. This was a direct strike on civilians on children, hospitals, and the city as a living organism.

Across Kyiv, fires, destruction, and evacuations were recorded. In the Darnytskyi district, a drone hit a 24-storey residential building, partially destroying the upper floors. In the Dniprovskyi district, fires broke out on several floors of an apartment building, with a person possibly trapped under the rubble. In the Shevchenkivskyi district, a drone directly hit a residential building. In total, 22 people were injured, including two children, and 12 victims were hospitalized.

This is the real price of the so-called “precision strikes” that Russian official channels like to lie about.

At the same time as the attacks on electricity infrastructure, the enemy also struck gas infrastructure and combined heat and power plants of the Naftogaz group. This was reported by Serhii Koretskyi, Head of the Management Board of Naftogaz of Ukraine. The attacks took place against the backdrop of falling temperatures and peak loads, once again confirming that the strikes were synchronized not with military logic, but with the weather.

The goal is simple and cynical to exploit frost in order to amplify the humanitarian impact of the attacks, complicate system operations, and impose a sense of helplessness on society. This is why emergency crews, technical services, and all профильні units are working in an intensified mode, often during ongoing air raid alerts.

And here a crucial point must be emphasized. Despite the scale of the strikes, Ukraine’s integrated power system remains intact. It continues to operate synchronously with the continental European power grid. System balancing is ensured through electricity imports, emergency consumption restrictions, and reserve schemes. This means the enemy’s strategy to collapse the system is not working the way it was intended.

Yes, the cost is high. Yes, it is hard for people. Yes, darkness and cold are not statistics but the daily reality for hundreds of thousands of families. But the energy war waged by Russia does not deliver its main objective collapse.

The events of December 27 show the core reality: the enemy bets on scale, repetition, and exhaustion, on turning infrastructure strikes into a routine. Ukraine, meanwhile, holds on to something else the speed of recovery, the resilience of the system, and the people who refuse to let it fall.

And this is what enrages the aggressor the most. Because every restored substation, every repaired power line, every home where light and heat return is proof that energy terror does not work the way they want it to.