Russia strikes key Ukrainian energy facility in Odesa

On December 12, Russian forces attacked a DTEK substation, the largest private investor in Ukraine’s energy sector, in the Odesa region.

According to a statement shared on DTEK's Telegram channel, this is the 20th energy infrastructure facility in the region to sustain significant damage, Caliber.Az reports.

The company stated that another energy company’s facility was also hit in the strike.

Local authorities reported that backup power systems have restored electricity for 40,000 households, but 90,000 remain temporarily without power.

“Energy workers across the Odesa region are working in an intensified mode to eliminate the consequences of the shelling as quickly as possible,” the statement read.

Russia has systematically targeted Ukraine’s power infrastructure—electricity generation, transmission and distribution facilities—since the full-scale invasion in 2022, with attacks intensifying through 2024 and into 2025, crippling generation capacity and triggering widespread blackouts.

By late 2024, nearly half of Ukraine’s energy system had been damaged or destroyed from sustained missile and drone strikes, leaving generation capacity far below pre-war levels and forcing the grid into near‑constant rolling outages.

In 2025 alone, thousands of disruptions to power grids, oil and gas infrastructure have been reported, reflecting a deliberate campaign to undermine Ukraine’s civilian energy supply and strain the country’s economy and social stability.

By Jeyhun Aghazada