Russia isn’t seeking a blackout — it’s trying to destabilize Ukraine, says Energy Ministry

The ongoing attacks on Ukraine’s power grid are aimed less at causing a full blackout and more at undermining society, acting Energy Minister Artem Nekrasov told Forbes.

He stressed that restoring the energy system to a "no-outage" state would not take long if shelling stopped."We recently calculated that if the strikes ceased today, it would take about two months to restore the system," Nekrasov said.

However, the Ministry does not expect such a scenario and assumes that "attacks will continue" at least through the end of winter.

"Their plan now is to destabilize society," Nekrasov said.

According to him, the goal of Russian strikes is to sow panic, weaken resilience, and create divisions within the country.

The loss of energy system integrity could significantly worsen electricity supply on the Left Bank and in parts of the Right Bank. This, he warned, could help Russia push narratives intended to fracture society."That’s why a full blackout is unlikely to be their primary objective — we will repair, reconnect, and recover," he added.

• On December 27, Russia launched a large-scale strike on energy infrastructure in Kyiv and the wider region. As of December 29, emergency outages remained in force on the city’s Left Bank, with scheduled blackouts extended.
• Earlier, the December 23 attack forced nuclear power plants in western Ukraine to reduce output, leaving almost three regions almost entirely without power.