Russia is preparing a winter air campaign of up to 1,000 missiles, drones and glide bombs intended to cut electricity and heat supplies to Kyiv, Kharkiv and Odesa by 90 per cent and break Ukrainian resistance through the cold, according to a Russian military plan that Ukraine says it intercepted, The New York Times reported on 2 October. Denys Shmyhal, Ukraine's first deputy prime minister and energy minister, presented the document to European partners in Paris about two weeks earlier. The Times wrote that it could not independently verify the document, which is written in Russian and dated August.
Shmyhal told the newspaper: "Our partners, like us, were struck by its cynicism, by this cold, terrorist calculation of how to destroy our energy sector."
Nuclear plants
Ukraine's three operating nuclear power stations, Rivne, Khmelnytskyi and South Ukraine, are named in the plan, according to the Times. Russian forces would strike the switchyards and distribution substations that connect the plants to the national grid rather than the reactors themselves. The Times described the sites as less than a mile from the reactors; Ukrainian outlets summarising the report rendered the distance as less than a kilometre. Cutting those connections would force the plants to disconnect from the grid. The Zaporizhzhia plant, the largest in Europe, has been under Russian control since March 2022.
Nuclear reactors that lose their grid connection must cut output or shut down, and they depend on external power or emergency diesel generators to keep cooling reactor cores and spent fuel. On 23 November 2022, Russian missile strikes on the grid forced all of Ukraine's nuclear plants to disconnect at once, the International Atomic Energy Agency reported at the time.
Ukraine's Defence Intelligence (HUR) warned in January 2026 that Moscow was considering strikes on the substations serving the nuclear plants. "By destroying or disabling the specified substations, Moscow seeks to disconnect the nuclear power plant units from the unified energy system of Ukraine, so that Ukrainian civilians will be completely without electricity and heat," the agency said. Andrii Sybiha, the foreign minister, called on the IAEA and foreign governments on 17 January to press Russia to drop the plans. "Moscow knows no limits in its genocidal goal of depriving Ukrainians of power amid freezing winter," he wrote.
Water supply
Dozens of ballistic missiles and guided bombs are assigned in the document to pumping stations and water treatment plants, with the aim of severely disrupting sewage systems in the three cities, according to the Times. Russia has never carried out large-scale strikes on such facilities, the newspaper reported, and Ukrainian officials have only limited contingency plans for a serious failure of the water supply.
Generating capacity
Almost 15 gigawatts of generating capacity would be taken out under the plan, the Times reported. Ukraine had about 15 gigawatts available in August and expects to reach 21 gigawatts by the end of the year, against peak demand of 18 gigawatts last winter, according to figures cited by the newspaper. About 5 gigawatts has been restored recently. Kyiv residents went 12 hours or more a day without electricity last winter, when temperatures in the capital fell below minus 20C. Electricity substations, hydroelectric and thermal power stations and boiler houses are also listed as targets.
Olena Pavlenko, head of the Kyiv energy think tank DiXi Group, told the Times that surviving another winter would be "akin to running a marathon on one lung".
Ukraine's cabinet said in early September that 79.2 per cent of residential buildings, about 114,000 of 144,000, were ready for the heating season. Bloomberg reported in September that Russian forces had sharply reduced their use of ballistic missiles since August and were relying more on jet-powered drones. The Institute for the Study of War assessed that Russia was continuing to increase ballistic missile production and could use larger salvoes in winter. Russia's defence ministry posted a video of attack drones on Telegram on 14 August with a caption threatening to freeze Ukraine during the winter, bne IntelliNews reported. Russian forces carried out a heavy strike on Ukrainian energy infrastructure on 30 September.
"No rules now"
Zelensky told the Financial Times on 2 October that Putin had ordered the military in September to abandon restraints on air strikes. "He said there are no rules now," Zelensky said. Ukrainian intelligence intercepted communications between Kremlin officials, he said; Kyiv has not released them and their contents could not be verified.
Russian attacks on Kyiv have since hit schools, hospitals, telecommunications sites and data centres, Zelensky said. A strike on data centres in Kyiv on 23 September disrupted internet service, Kyiv Post reported. Russian forces hit the National Academy of Sciences building in central Kyiv on 28 September. On 1 October a jet-powered drone struck a Kyiv school while 104 pupils and 60 teachers sheltered underground; its 50-kilogram warhead pierced the floor and did not detonate, according to Kyiv Post. The Pivdennyi Bridge across the Dnipro was struck the same day, damaging a support column, the road surface and a barrier.
Russia launched more than 100 attack drones overnight from 1 to 2 October, nearly 50 of them jet-powered, United24 reported. Zelensky told the FT that Ukrainian forces intercept about 57 per cent of jet-powered drones, against 85 to 90 per cent of conventional drones.
Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, has denied that Russian forces strike schools or hospitals, Kyiv Post reported. Ukraine's education ministry has recorded more than 4,700 attacks on educational institutions since the full-scale invasion began in February 2022, and the World Health Organization has verified more than 3,000 attacks on health care facilities.
