Kyiv crippled by severe power shortfall as supplies halve city needs

Kyiv is struggling through its most severe wartime energy crisis after repeated attacks degraded generation and transmission, leaving the capital with roughly half the power it needs to serve its 3.6 million residents, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said. The city requires about 1,700 megawatts to run services fully but is operating on only a fraction of that capacity, forcing rolling outages, suspended transport and mass use of backup generators.

Officials described an intensified wave of strikes on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure in mid-January that further damaged generation plants, substations and grid links. President Volodymyr Zelensky said the overnight assault included "more than 300 attack drones… 18 ballistic missiles and 7 cruise missiles," hitting multiple regions and leaving several hundred thousand households in the Kyiv region without power. The national system, still recovering from accumulated wartime damage, was meeting only around 60 percent of demand, prompting scheduled, regionwide cuts.

The human toll in Kyiv was immediate and tangible. Klitschko said some residents faced up to 18 to 20 hours a day without mains electricity, and local authorities reported that roughly 500 high-rise buildings had no heating as the grid faltered. The mayor warned of an "acute shortage of electricity even for critical infrastructure." Electricity-powered transport was suspended across half the city, compounding difficulties for those needing to reach heated shelters or medical care. A number of residents reported being without power and heat for days.

Authorities responded by declaring emergency measures, opening about 1,300 heated sites to shelter people through freezing nights and prioritizing pumps, hospitals, kindergartens and other critical services for generator supply. City officials said about 300 tonnes of fuel a day were needed to run backup generators and that mini thermal power stations and small localized generators were being installed to decentralize electricity and heating where possible. Klitschko urged residents who can leave the capital to consider doing so to reduce strain on services. Schools extended winter holidays and many businesses shifted employees to remote work.

At the national level, the government moved to accelerate electricity imports and deploy additional power equipment. Zelensky said on X that "all decisions for this are already in place, and the increase in imports must proceed without delay." Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said officials and state energy company Naftogaz had discussed additional gas imports this year, though no volumes or timelines were disclosed.

Colder-than-normal conditions amplified the crisis: nighttime temperatures plunged to roughly −16°C to −17°C in Kyiv, sharply increasing heating demand and raising the risk of health emergencies among vulnerable groups. The confluence of weather and infrastructure damage left municipal planners focused on immediate life-safety operations while the national grid managers scrambled to stabilize supply.

The disruption underscores how attacks on power infrastructure can cascade into broader humanitarian and economic impacts. Restoring adequate capacity will depend on rapid imports and repairs to damaged assets, continued fuel supplies for generators and weather easing. For now, Kyiv faces days of constrained electricity, curtailed services and a high-stakes effort to prevent the outage crisis from deepening during the coldest stretch of winter.