Emergency power outages hit most regions of Ukraine on Tuesday

On the afternoon of 9 December, emergency power outages were implemented in most regions of Ukraine due to damage to the power grid caused by Russian missile and drone attacks, Ukrenergo, the national transmission system operator, reported at 15:07.

Hourly outage schedules do not apply in regions where emergency shutdowns are in effect. Power cuts will be lifted once the situation in the energy system stabilizes.

Oleksandr Kharchenko, director of the Energy Research Center, said the recent large-scale strikes have caused extensive damage to generation facilities and high-voltage networks. "At this point, it is easier to list what is working than what is not," he noted.

He added that, provided there are no new attacks, the situation in the energy sector could improve within three to four days, but full recovery will take 10–12 weeks.

"We are now in the first stage of restoring high-voltage networks. The two recent attacks were significant. On one hand, areas with proper protection fared much better. Unfortunately, that is not universal, and there are substantial equipment losses, particularly where no protection was in place," Kharchenko said at a briefing at the Ukraine Media Center on Tuesday.

• On 6 December, Ukrenergo’s CEO stated that full restoration of Ukraine’s power system after the massive Russian strike would take weeks.
• This was the eighth large-scale missile and drone attack on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure since the beginning of the year.