Skyscrapers go without electricity for up to 12 hours a day, nearby cafes and restaurants roar with the sound of gas-powered generators, and at night the streets are darkened by a lack of lighting.
This is Ukraine's new reality: the arrival of summer has not brought any respite to the country's power grid, which has instead plunged it back into an energy crisis similar to that experienced during the first winter of the war a year and a half ago.
In recent months, Russian missile and drone attacks on Ukrainian power plants and substations have severely damaged the country's energy infrastructure. To make matters worse, two nuclear power plants are scheduled for repairs this week, and rising summer temperatures are expected to encourage people to turn on their air conditioners.
As a result, Ukrainian authorities this week ordered nationwide rolling blackouts, a more aggressive measure than the localized and unscheduled outages experienced in parts of the country earlier this spring.
Volodymyr Kudritsky, president of Ukraine's state-owned power company Ukrenergo, said on Sunday that the power shortage the country will face this week will be “quite serious.”
Emergency power outages were imposed in seven of Ukraine's 24 regions, Ukrenergo said on Tuesday.
While a summer power shortage can mean uncomfortable heat in darkened apartments, winter poses an even more deadly danger.
And already widespread power outages in Ukraine are raising concerns about what will happen when frigid weather arrives and heating use puts increased strain on the energy system. Experts warn that power plants have sustained too much damage to be repaired before freezing temperatures arrive around December, potentially leaving many people in dangerously cold living conditions.
“The situation is even worse than last year,” Olena Lapenko, an energy security expert at the Ukrainian think tank Diksh Group, said in an interview Monday, referring to the winter of 2022-2023, when Russia launched heavy attacks on Ukraine's energy infrastructure.
Even with moderate temperatures and no new Russian attacks on the power grid, Lapenko estimates that Ukraine will face a 1.3 gigawatt power shortfall at peak consumption this summer — roughly one-tenth of its peak energy consumption.
“Can you imagine what happens in the winter?” Lapenko asked.
Russia has previously targeted Ukraine's energy infrastructure. Between October 2022 and March 2023, Moscow launched missile attacks that knocked out half of Ukraine's power grid by November 2022. Residents of the capital, Kiev, were forced to rely on flashlights at night and considered evacuating the city.
Ukraine survived the attack thanks to newly installed Western air defense systems and around-the-clock work by technicians to repair vital equipment.
But the latest operation against Russia's power grid, which began in late March, has been more devastating than previous ones as Moscow has improved its tactics, launching larger and more complex missile barrages that Ukraine's limited air defenses have struggled to intercept.
Energy experts estimate that Ukraine has lost about half of its generating capacity since the start of the war, a major problem because most of the country's thermal and hydroelectric plants have been destroyed, providing the excess capacity needed to meet demand during peak consumption periods.
Ukraine's former Energy Minister Olha Buslavets said last week that Ukraine is now essentially dependent on nuclear power plants, which provide most of the country's electricity but cannot meet peak demand.
DiXi Group says there is not enough time to rebuild sufficient generating capacity before winter sets in. Olena Pavlenko, head of the think tank, said Ukraine needs spare equipment such as transformers to rebuild substations. Kyiv hopes it can get spare parts from a decommissioned thermal power plant in Germany, Pavlenko said.
Pavlenko added that one way to help solve the problem would be for authorities to install gas turbine mobile power plants across the country, but that option could take up to a year.
Ukraine, normally a net exporter of electricity, is currently importing record amounts of power from neighboring countries including Romania, Slovakia and Poland. But Ukrenergo's Kudritskyi said imports were not enough to make up for the loss.
As a result, Ukrainian authorities are implementing planned blackouts across the country to stabilize the power grid. Ukraine's largest private utility, DTEK, has published an online blackout schedule to let customers know when their homes will be shut off, but additional emergency power outages may be needed.
Several Kiev residents on Tuesday said the blackouts had forced them to reassess their daily lives. Anna Yatsenko, a 37-year-old film producer and mother of four, said she would use electronic devices to cool her home and do ironing and laundry as soon as the power was restored.
“My husband gets up to charge the power bank,” Yatsenko said. “I can't boil a kettle. Using a hairdryer is a luxury.”
Oleksandr Kharchenko, head of the Kyiv-based Energy Research Center, said at a press conference on Monday that it would take at least two years for the power grid to be fully restored.
“We understand that we need to prepare for routine power outages for the next two years, not as a crisis situation, but as a normal thing,” Kharchenko said. “Honestly, all we can do is get used to this as a normal situation.”
