Ukraine’s reported decision to cut electricity to around 80 Russian military facilities in occupied Donetsk marks a sharp evolution in how the war is being fought, shifting the focus from front-line trenches to the power lines that keep an army moving. Instead of chasing every armored column, Kyiv is increasingly trying to switch off the grid that feeds them. The result is a contest of infrastructure attrition in which substations, thermal plants, and transmission nodes have become as strategically important as tanks or artillery.
This approach is not happening in a vacuum. It comes after Russia inflicted severe damage on Ukraine’s own energy system, including strikes that halved nuclear output and forced emergency blackouts across the country. The campaign in Donetsk is best understood as part of a broader feedback loop, where each side tests how far it can go in degrading the other’s power supply without losing control of the political and humanitarian fallout.
From drone raids to grid warfare in occupied Donetsk
The reported blackout affecting roughly 80 Russian bases in occupied Donetsk appears to be the culmination of a strategy that has been building for months: use precision strikes to sever the electricity feeding key military hubs. Ukrainian planners are effectively treating the occupied grid as a nervous system, where disabling a few major nodes can paralyze command posts, logistics depots, and air defense sites spread across a wide area. In practical terms, that means targeting the thermal power plants and substations that route energy into Russian barracks, radar stations, and ammunition warehouses.
Earlier strikes on two thermal power plants in the Russian occupied part of Donetsk fit this pattern, with Ukrainian attacks reportedly cutting electricity to many settlements across the region and disrupting Russian positions that rely on the same grid as nearby towns. Those operations, described in detail in reports on two thermal plants, show how a handful of well-placed hits can ripple through both civilian and military infrastructure. If the latest wave of attacks has indeed darkened dozens of Russian bases, it suggests Kyiv is scaling up a concept it has already tested on a smaller scale.
Mirror campaigns: Russia’s grid attacks and Ukraine’s response
To understand why Ukraine is willing to risk large-scale outages in occupied territory, it helps to look at what Russia has done to Ukraine’s own grid. Russian forces have repeatedly targeted substations, thermal plants, and nuclear facilities, seeking to break Ukraine’s resilience by cutting heat and light to millions of civilians. In one of the most damaging episodes, Russia’s worst attack on key substations cut Ukraine’s nuclear power output in half, forcing operators to scramble to stabilize the system and leaving the country in what officials described as a critical situation even after emergency repairs to a major nuclear substation.
Those strikes were not isolated. Russia has also caused what Ukrainian authorities called significant damage to thermal plants and nuclear facilities in a mass attack that triggered emergency power outages across the country and raised fresh concerns about energy security. The scale of that assault, which Ukrainian leaders linked directly to significant damage to critical infrastructure, effectively normalized the idea that the power grid itself is a legitimate battlefield target. Against that backdrop, Ukraine’s decision to hit Russian-controlled plants in Donetsk looks less like escalation for its own sake and more like a calibrated attempt to impose similar costs on the occupying forces.
Drone power: precision strikes and occupied Ukraine
The main instrument of this grid-focused strategy is the drone. Ukrainian forces have steadily expanded their use of unmanned systems to reach deep into occupied territory, where traditional artillery would struggle to hit hardened or distant targets. Earlier this year, Ukrainian drone strikes in Russian occupied southern Ukraine cut electricity to more than 200,000 homes, a scale of disruption that local officials described as one of the largest power losses in the nearly four year war. That operation, which left over 200,000 households without power according to local reporting, showed how a relatively small number of drones can have outsized effects when they hit the right nodes.
Those same tactics are now being applied in Donetsk, where Ukrainian Operations have reportedly focused on energy infrastructure that feeds Russian military facilities and logistics hubs. Analytical assessments of Ukrainian Operations in the Russian Federation and occupied areas describe a pattern of strikes that cause both physical damage and prolonged power outages. The logic is straightforward: a drone that destroys a transformer or control room can immobilize rail lines, fuel depots, and command centers that depend on stable electricity, forcing Russia to divert scarce engineering units and air defenses away from the front to protect and repair the grid behind it.
Collateral strain: civilians, logistics, and the ethics of darkness
There is a hard truth at the center of this strategy: grids are shared. The same lines that power Russian barracks in occupied Donetsk also keep apartment blocks lit and hospitals running. When Ukraine hits a thermal plant or substation under Russian control, civilians living under occupation often lose power alongside the military. The earlier drone strikes that cut electricity to more than 200,000 homes in Russian occupied southern Ukraine are a stark example of how quickly a military operation can translate into civilian hardship, even when the intended targets are ammunition depots or command posts tied into the same network.
For Kyiv, the ethical and political calculation is that responsibility for those hardships ultimately lies with the occupying power that integrated its military footprint into civilian infrastructure and refused to withdraw. Yet that argument will be tested as outages in places like Donetsk drag on. If Russian authorities prioritize restoring power to their own bases before reconnecting local residents, the perception among civilians could swing either way: some may blame Moscow for neglect, others may resent Kyiv for the blackout itself. In a war where information is as contested as territory, the narrative around who turned off the lights could matter almost as much as the physical damage.
Drone exports and the future of infrastructure warfare
There is another, less discussed dimension to Ukraine’s grid-focused campaign: its impact on the country’s emerging drone industry. Ukrainian manufacturers are already exporting systems to European customers, with local producers describing how they are doing everything they can to cut off Russia’s logistics at the strategic level while also building a sustainable export business. Reporting on how While Ukraine targets Russian infrastructure, its drone producers now export to Europe, suggests a feedback loop in which battlefield performance directly shapes foreign demand. Every successful strike on a high value grid node in occupied territory becomes, in effect, a live demonstration for potential buyers in Warsaw, Tallinn, or Berlin.
It is reasonable to expect that this real world testing will translate into more contracts, particularly from European states that worry about their own critical infrastructure in a crisis. If Ukrainian drones can repeatedly penetrate Russian air defenses and disable key energy assets, defense ministries watching from the sidelines will take note. Over the next six months, I expect to see a measurable uptick in European procurement of Ukrainian systems, not just for front line roles but for deterrence missions focused on protecting or, if necessary, threatening infrastructure. That shift would further entrench a model of warfare in which power plants and substations are treated less like civilian utilities and more like dual use assets, central to both national security and daily life.
More from Morning Overview
*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
