In the days since U.S. President Donald Trump’s highly public falling out with Ukraine and growing rapprochement with Russia, Kyiv’s prospects going into the fifth winter of war look grim. The Trump administration has demanded that Ukraine suspend its attacks on Russian refineries, which have been one of Ukraine’s most effective means of putting pressure on Moscow. Meanwhile, Kyiv faces dangerous gaps in its air defenses against Russia’s jet-powered drones and stepped-up use of ballistic missiles. And Trump has entered into a deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin that temporarily waives U.S. sanctions on Russian diesel exports, offering Moscow a diplomatic win. Trump’s envoys have also proposed that Europe increase purchases of Russian gas as part of an effort to gain the Kremlin’s support for peace—further complicating the efforts of Ukraine and its remaining allies to squeeze Russia.
Yet missing from this bleak picture are the ways that Ukraine has already adapted to escalating attacks. Kyiv has developed innovative strategies to mitigate the impact of Russian energy strikes and keep its grid running, even amid intense bombardment. And despite the new U.S. pressure, Ukraine has continued to launch powerful drone strikes against Russia’s energy infrastructure, including successful mid-October attacks on an oil terminal in St. Petersburg and industrial gas processing plants as far away as Surgut and the Novy Urengoy, 1,800 miles from the Ukrainian border. Overall, since mid-2025, Ukrainian drone strikes have reduced Russian refinery throughput by roughly 30 percent; they have also eroded a significant share of Moscow’s excess refining capacity, resulting in a gasoline shortfall of about ten percent.
Still, this is only one part of a rapidly evolving energy war. Moscow has developed its own ways to limit the effects of Ukrainian strikes. And it has intensified its assault on Ukrainian infrastructure, including an October 19 barrage that damaged more than ten energy facilities. DiXi Group, a Ukrainian think tank, has estimated that Russia launched 12,800 missiles and drones at Ukrainian energy facilities in 2025 and early 2026, compared with just 2,800 during the first three years of the war combined. Although these figures count launches rather than successful strikes, they show how massive and relentless the Russian campaign has become.
Moreover, both sides are now able to target the substitutes and reserves that in the past could be used to cushion losses. Following Russian strikes on local power plants in early October, Ukrainians experienced widespread blackouts, even though Ukraine’s national grid had electricity to spare, because Russia continued hitting the lines and substations carrying the reserve power. During the summer, Ukraine hit so many of the refineries and pipelines around Moscow that Russia was forced to bring fuel by rail from as far as Lake Baikal, thousands of miles away.
If U.S. pressure and negotiations cannot stop the energy war, the central question for Ukraine is whether its remarkable capacity to adapt can keep pace with Russian attacks. At the same time, its fortunes this winter will depend on whether it can continue to hit Russian infrastructure in ways that challenge Moscow’s ability to repair and rebuild. Both Russia and Ukraine must now protect and repair their entire national networks around the clock; attackers can concentrate on the most vulnerable sites and strike again as soon as repairs are done. In such a war, defensive ingenuity matters as much as offensive capability. In the end, energy attacks alone are unlikely to force either side to accept the other’s terms, neither side may be able to gain a decisive advantage, even as both incur mounting costs. Recognizing the limits, as well as the power, of these strikes may be crucial not only to ending the present conflict but also to understanding the role that energy infrastructure will likely play in future wars.
THE RACE AGAINST ROCKETS
For Ukraine, international support has been especially crucial in containing Russia’s energy barrage. As of November 2025, before the worst of last winter’s attacks, Ukraine had suffered $17.1 billion in direct damage to its electricity infrastructure, according to a report by the UN, the World Bank, and the European Commission. Yet Kyiv was able to keep the electricity flowing by drawing on the country’s remaining nuclear plants; repairing thermal generation facilities; increasing electricity, gas, and diesel imports; and compensating for lost power plants with distributed generation—smaller units running on solar, wind, gas, and diesel energy that are connected to the main grid.
Europe has also provided crucial replacement technology. In 2025, the European Commission delivered equipment from a retired Lithuanian thermal power plant to Ukraine in 149 shipments, enabling Ukraine to provide power to one million people. Such transfers have turned foreign utilities and suppliers into part of Ukraine’s rapid repair system. In September, Ukraine and the UN Development Program launched a new coordination center to speed up the installation of donated energy equipment.
Expanded use of batteries and distributed power also play a growing role. In September 2025, the Ukrainian energy company DTEK and the U.S.-based battery maker Fluence installed battery storage at six sites around Kyiv and Dnipro, with enough capacity to supply 600,000 households, roughly half of Kyiv, for two hours. Meanwhile, Kyiv has put in place 150 megawatts of distributed power generation—not enough to cover winter peak demand, but sufficient to provide more than half of the city’s essential services, including water supplies, hospitals, and heating systems. Nonetheless, Ukrainian reports suggest that 2,500 to 3,000 of Kyiv’s 12,000 apartment buildings could enter winter without an alternative heat supply.
Russia does not have to switch off Ukraine’s power to impose an extraordinary burden.
That vulnerability is especially dangerous because restoring electricity does not automatically restore heat. Replacement boilers can help, but they must be installed locally, supplied with fuel, and connected to functioning heat networks, often while the same city remains under repeated attack. Last winter, UN monitors recorded at least 74 Russian attacks on heating infrastructure across Ukraine—attacks that left hundreds of thousands of people without heat or hot water for weeks on end in frigid temperatures. Keeping the national electric grid running did not make those homes habitable in freezing weather. Residents can try to solve the problem with electric space heaters, but their widespread use could overload the already fragile grid.
To prepare for even worse conditions this winter, Kyiv has been building up gas reserves. As of August, Ukraine’s gas stocks stood at 13.1 billion cubic meters, compared with 9.6 billion a year earlier. Still, stored gas must reach functioning heat and power plants, and electricity must pass through functioning transmission networks, both of which Russia has been continually attacking. Regardless of how resilient the national system is, Russia’s incessant targeting of particular Ukrainian cities has left them exposed, because local sources of substitute supply are often attacked before damaged facilities can be restored.
Meanwhile, Ukrainians are paying for the survival of their energy system in ways that capacity measures miss. Across the country, businesses have to run expensive generators, cut shifts, or close. Households spend more for fewer hours of reliable service. Declining industrial demand can make the electricity balance sheet look healthier, when the reality is that the economy is deteriorating under the pressure of relentless attacks. Those losses weaken the tax base and increase the need for foreign support. Russia does not have to switch off Ukraine’s power to impose an extraordinary burden.
WAR AT ANY PRICE
Russia has also felt the growing effects of the energy war. In theory, Moscow has a much larger cushion: when the war began, its refineries produced more fuel than its domestic market consumed, and many had excess capacity to distill crude than to convert the resulting streams into finished motor fuel. Losing one distillation unit did not necessarily mean losing an equivalent share of gasoline or diesel supply. But Ukraine’s attacks this year have tested the limits of that flexibility.
In June, Ukrainian drones hit one of two processing units at Moscow’s Kapotnya refinery and hit the other six days later. The refinery was shut down after the June attacks and although it subsequently resumed operations, another strike again halted processing in September. Elsewhere, Ukrainian attacks have damaged complex units that are designed to raise fuel yields and improve quality; they can take six to eight months to fix, so they might remain unavailable through the coming winter heating season. Spare primary distillation capacity cannot replace damaged secondary equipment needed to turn intermediate products into finished gasoline and diesel.
To make up for these losses, the Russian government has loosened fuel standards, allowing naphtha blended with octane boosters to enter the gasoline supply, and extended state subsidies to imported gasoline. Russian companies can also send crude to its ally Belarus for processing or import finished products. These measures have helped fill consumers’ gas tanks without restoring the equipment that previously supplied them. But they come at a cost, which consumers, companies, and the state will all ultimately have to absorb.
Not all Ukrainian drone strikes have had such long-term impact. In March 2026, for example, Ukraine attacked the Ust-Luga oil terminal, which is on the Baltic Sea near St. Petersburg, continually for almost two weeks, halting oil shipments from that terminal. But shipments from Ust-Luga resumed a few weeks later, and by late April Russia’s total seaborne crude exports averaged 3.8 million barrels a day—up seven percent from March and 11 percent from a year earlier. This increase helped offset falling exports of refined products, as damage to refineries left more crude available for export.
For Moscow, the most pressing question is how to manage fuel shortages. Through higher prices and rationing, it can ensure that the military remains well supplied even if civilians have to cut back. It can also use subsidies and price controls to provide some relief to consumers. None of these options are costless, but as long as the government is willing to impose lower living standards and absorb the resulting political costs, it retains considerable room to maneuver. Ukrainian strikes can force Russia to spread its air defense thinner, absorb money and labor, and reduce its income from refining. They can somewhat reduce the oil and gas revenue that finances Russia’s war, but none of these costs are likely to make the war prohibitively expensive for the Kremlin.
THE BLAME GAME
Paradoxically, the growing success of Ukraine’s strikes against Russian refineries has brought new pressure on Kyiv itself. To buttress its increasingly constrained domestic market, Russia has reduced the amount of diesel it is selling abroad. Normally, higher prices should encourage refiners elsewhere to take up the slack, but the U.S. war against Iran has made that adjustment harder. Combined Russian and Middle Eastern net diesel and gasoil exports in September were 1.3 million barrels a day below their level a year earlier, according to the International Energy Agency. That global supply crunch has also affected the United States, which has now blamed Ukraine for stubbornly high U.S. diesel prices.
Ordinarily, the United States enjoys a substantial diesel surplus and is the world’s largest diesel exporter. Yet in the absence of export controls, quotas, or export tariffs, the U.S. market is exposed to galloping international prices, even when there is no U.S. fuel shortage. It is also far easier for the Trump administration to press Ukraine to stop its attacks on Russian refineries—and to enter a diesel agreement with Russia—than to restore lost Middle Eastern diesel exports.
In reality, Washington’s moves are unlikely to add much to global supply in the near term: redirecting existing exports does not create additional fuel. A larger, lasting increase would require Russian refineries to recover and stay in operation. This is where Washington has an incentive to restrain Ukraine’s attacks—even to the point of withholding, or threatening to withhold, Kyiv’s access to Starlink satellite service or U.S. intelligence, or to block European purchases of U.S. weapons for Ukraine. If Ukraine complies with U.S. demands, one risk is that Moscow could obtain protection for its refineries while continuing its assault on Ukrainian cities.
The United States is not the only external player in this widening energy war. For Europe, Ukraine’s collapse would create a security threat far greater than the cost of replacing transformers or financing fuel imports. Thus, in mid-October, the EU’s ambassador to Ukraine described a $1.1 billion energy support package Europe is preparing for the coming winter, which will enhance Ukraine’s ability to recover. But if some European countries, despite the European Commission’s opposition, accede to the Trump administration’s proposal to expand European purchases of Russian gas in the hope of lowering energy costs for households and industry—that could bolster Moscow’s earnings and its ability to finance the war. Europe’s energy choices matter on both sides of the contest.
China and India may also affect the future direction of the energy war. Thus far, both countries’ purchases of Russian crude have helped sustain Russia’s war machine. Moreover, by refining discounted barrels of Russian crude, both countries can benefit their own industries, and by exporting more refined fuel, they can ease the global crunch that is now driving U.S. pressure on Ukraine. But the ability of these countries to raise their exports depends on available crude and government approval—particularly in China. Over time, Russia’s leverage from the current diesel crunch will shrink as other suppliers recover, trade adjusts, and consumption falls. But that shift is unlikely to happen in time for this winter: the International Energy Agency expects diesel markets to remain tight well into 2027.
THE ADAPTATION SPIRAL
For both Russia and Ukraine, the aim of the energy war is clear: to disrupt or break the adversary’s economy to the point of undermining support for the war or making it unsustainable. But there are few indications that either side can achieve such an outcome. U.S. pressure could nevertheless produce a cease-fire or a broader settlement, even on terms deeply unfavorable to Ukraine. A mutual halt to energy strikes would give both sides relief and time to recover.
For now, however, an enormous gap remains between the conditions that Moscow and Kyiv deem minimally acceptable for even a temporary cease-fire. High levels of mutual distrust have increased that gap further. Moreover, a deal to protect only refineries, as the Trump administration has called for, would leave Ukraine’s cities and other infrastructure still exposed to Russian attacks. And Moscow has less incentive to accept any such deal if it can secure Ukrainian restraint through pressure by Washington, without making concessions of its own.
If diplomacy fails, the most likely scenario is another winter of sustained strikes on energy and other infrastructure by both sides. For Russia, the loss of refining capacity has been manageable thus far, but that does not preclude larger problems ahead. With each additional loss of capacity, Russia’s protection of its military energy supply becomes more expensive. Certain regions that have already been squeezed, such as occupied Crimea, could become especially vulnerable. If Moscow is unable to make repairs fast enough or otherwise compensate for further losses of refining capacity, regional fuel shortages could develop into wider disruptions to civilian transport and industry.
Energy attacks alone are unlikely to force either side to accept the other’s terms.
For Ukraine, the central risk is a cascading series of Russian attacks on the same city. During prolonged cold, repeated attacks—whether on Kyiv or Kharkiv or Odessa—could exhaust backup supplies faster than crews can restore service. Prolonged pump stoppages could lead to a disastrous local scenario of ruptured water supply, district heating, and sewage pipes, even if electricity remains available elsewhere in the country. A milder winter and timely equipment deliveries could keep Ukraine ahead of such a crisis, but delays in air defense deliveries or the loss of a critical heating facility could overwhelm a city whose electricity balance looked adequate. An indication of danger will be local power outages that continue to grow despite repairs, showing that recovery is unable to keep pace with attacks.
As it prepares for what will likely be its harshest winter yet, Kyiv faces a dilemma: if it reduces or suspends its attacks on Russian refineries to preserve U.S. military support, it will give Moscow a repair window while the Ukrainian grid remains exposed. If Kyiv refuses, it could continue its strikes but face intelligence or Starlink cutoffs that could make its infrastructure harder to defend. An additional influx of European funds and technology could soften the consequences—and perhaps provide some alternatives to U.S. communication networks—but will not fully replace U.S. intelligence and air-defense capabilities. That dilemma will not go away as long as Ukraine’s own infrastructure is exposed to attack.
As it approaches its fifth anniversary, the conflict in Ukraine has transformed energy warfare in ways that have few precedents. The advent of cheap long-range weapons has allowed each side almost unlimited access to the energy infrastructure on which the other depends. Yet at the same time, innovations in distributed power generation, batteries, and mobile equipment have given defenders novel ways to preserve essential services and continually recover, even in the face of large-scale attacks. Russia’s deep industrial reserves and Ukraine’s impressive adaptation have shown that complex energy systems can withstand enormous damage. That endurance has been far greater than a tally of destroyed assets on either side would suggest.
But this same resilience can make wars longer and more devastating. As Ukraine and Russia have shown, each side can gain confidence from its ability to sustain repeated attacks while also persuading itself that an even more intense campaign against its adversary might finally succeed. In this dynamic, each adjustment and workaround by one side invites a fresh attack by the other, and each new strike accelerates the search for new ways to endure. This adaptation spiral can continue even as economic and human losses mount. Only a true cease-fire can break the cycle. And that will depend on political choices that energy attacks alone cannot determine.
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