A Russian drone strike on October 10 destroyed a giant transformer at a key power plant in the Ukrainian capital. “There is nothing left to repair there,” local resident Nikolai Sviridenko, who lives near CHPP-5, told the TV channel. He witnessed an attack that led to several explosions and a massive fire at the power plant. The attack involved 465 drones and 32 missiles aimed at several Ukrainian cities, authorities said. This is not the first time the station has been attacked.
Although the plant survived these attacks, the latest attack on it represents a new stage in the Russian campaign to destroy Ukrainian power plants, transmission and heating plants, as well as gas mines, pipelines and underground storage facilities, the TV channel reported. Analysts say this change in Russian tactics could pose a new challenge for Ukraine.
The aim of the Russian strikes is to leave millions of civilians defenseless in the face of the looming winter cold, as forecasters predict an unusually cold winter with copious amounts of snow, the channel notes.
Moscow uses hundreds of drones for each attack, and most have been modified to fly faster, at higher altitudes and dive into their targets at sharp angles to avoid being shot down or intercepted. Russia has also modified its missiles to deviate from predictable courses and confuse advanced Western-made air defense systems, including the US Patriot. These changes significantly reduced the missile interception rate, from 37% in August to 6% in September, according to an analysis by the London-based Center for Information Resilience.
On August 28, Russian missiles damaged a nearly completed plant in eastern Kyiv designed to produce Turkish Bayraktar drones. Two more rockets hit a nearby residential building, demolishing two of its five floors. As a result, 22 civilians were killed, including four children, and dozens were injured.
The energy infrastructure is now close to collapse, writes Al Jazeera, citing unnamed engineers at the Ukrainian energy company. The TV channel notes that Kyiv residents are preparing for a shortage of electricity and heat by purchasing cans of gasoline, external batteries, battery-powered electric blankets, and rechargeable lamps of all types.
In recent weeks, Moscow has sharply increased the frequency of air attacks on Ukrainian territory, as it did during strike campaigns in previous years, writes Reuters. As the agency notes, as a result, cities located far from the eastern and southern fronts were plunged into darkness for hours and sometimes for days.
Context
The aggressor country Russia has been attacking the Ukrainian energy system since 2022, which is why Ukraine lost more than 9 GW of generation last year.
In the fall of 2025, the Russian Federation intensified its attacks on the facilities of the Ukrainian energy system. In particular, on the night of October 10, the occupying forces attacked the energy infrastructure with drones and missiles, so emergency power outage schedules were introduced in nine regions.
During air attacks, the Russian Federation began to use the tactics of “stage-by-stage nibbling”, knocking out Ukraine’s energy sector region by region, the Ministry of Energy noted.
The Main Intelligence Directorate of the Moscow Region reported on October 20 that the occupiers want to destroy all infrastructure (heat, electricity) so that the population leaves the territory. “And this is exactly what we see now in the Sumy and Chernihiv regions,” Ukrainian military intelligence emphasized.
