Russia reportedly launched its most intense missile and drone barrage on Ukraine early August 26, targeting critical energy infrastructure across the country. Plans to resume electricity exports, announced two days earlier, were reversed by the end of the day after Ukraine’s power sector suffered more catastrophic damage and cities across the country were plunged into darkness again.

Russia launched 236 aerial weapons of which Ukraine's air defence claim it downed 102 missiles and 99 attack drones in an onslaught that reportedly cost Russia a total of $1.3bn. Seven people were killed and 47 were injured, according to the State Emergency Service.

Ukraine recently disclosed details of the success rates for downing incoming Russian missiles of different types: prior to the August 26 barrage there have been a total of 11,879 missiles launched at Ukraine since the start of the war of which 43% have been successfully intercepted, according to commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrskyi.

However, Ukraine remains defenceless against some of Russia’s most advanced missile systems, such as the hypersonic Kinzhal missile, the Defence Ministry reports, whereas Ukraine’s defences can down two-thirds of the Shahed drones launched against it.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy described the overnight assault as “vile” and one of the largest since the invasion began, involving over 100 missiles and nearly as many drones. "This was a combined attack... more than a hundred missiles of different types and around a hundred drones," Zelenskiy said on his Telegram channel.

Ukraine was inching towards a ceasefire deal until the August 6 incursion of the Russian region of Kursk began. The August 26 missile barrage was likely a retaliation for that invasion of Russia, the first since the start of WWII. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said peace talks are now impossible last week and presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov added to that on August 26 saying that negotiations have “lost their relevance” following the incursion.

The strikes hit a total of 15 regions from Kharkiv in the east to Kyiv, Odesa, and Lviv in the west, focusing primarily on energy facilities. Emergency power cuts were implemented across all Ukrainian regions, despite earlier assurances from Ukrenergo, the state energy company, that there would be no outages on August 26.

This is the third big barrage this year following the January barrage when Ukraine first began to run out air defence ammunition, followed by an even more intense barrage in March after the air defence missile supplies were exhausted.

The Kremlin took the opportunity of the open skies to extensively target the power generation assets and destroyed 90% of Ukraine’s non-nuclear generation capacity, or about half its overall capacity. The barrage of August 26 was aimed at completing that task only two months ahead of the start of winter. In a race against time, the government has been scrambling to put in emergency measures to heat and light the country ahead of the fall of the first snow expected sometime in November.

The attacks resulted in widespread power outages, water supply disruptions, and significant damage to the Kyiv Hydroelectric Power Plant (HPP), with its machine hall and roadway reportedly impacted, Ukrainian officials said.

Russia's Defence Ministry confirmed the strikes, stating that it had targeted "critical energy infrastructure" essential to Ukraine's military-industrial complex. The ministry claimed that all intended targets were successfully hit, including substations and gas compressor stations in Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk, and Kharkiv regions, which are crucial to Ukraine's gas transportation network.

Lieutenant General Mykola Oleshchuk, Commander of Ukraine’s Air Force, detailed the types of rockets used on social media Ukrayinska Pravda reported:

·       3 Kh-47M2 Kinzhal aeroballistic missiles launched from the airspace of Ryazan and Lipetsk oblasts, Russia;

·       6 Iskander-M/KN-23 ballistic missiles from Russia’s Kursk and Voronezh oblasts, and Crimea;

·       77 Kh-101 cruise missiles launched with Tu-95MS aircraft from the airspace of Volgograd Oblast and the Caspian Sea;

·       28 Kalibr cruise missiles from surface/underwater vessels in the eastern Black Sea;

·       3 Kh-22 cruise missiles from the airspace of Voronezh Oblast, Russia;

·       10 Kh-59/Kh-69 guided missiles launched with Su-57 and Su-34 aircraft from the airspace of Belgorod Oblast, Russia, and from temporarily occupied Mariupol;

·       109 Shahed-131/136 attack UAVs from the launch areas of Primorsko-Akhtarsk, Kursk and Yeysk, Russia, and Chauda in Crimea.

Of the 109 Shahed drones launched, Ukraine shot down 99, and 99 of the Khinzal and Kalibr cruise missiles. All but one of the Iskander missiles defied air defences and hit their targets and two-thirds of the Kh-47M2 and Kh-22 Kinzhal aeroballistic missiles got through the defences as well. One missile apparently malfunctioned and came down in Poland and two more reportedly crashed in Belarus.

The Shahed-136/131 drone is amongst the cheapest munitions in Russia’s arsenal, costing from $49,000, if produced in Russia, and up to $290,000, if imported from Iran. The Kh-47M2 Kinzhal hypersonic missile is amongst the most expensive, costing around $10mn a piece and collectively accounting for $1bn of the total $1.3bn spent by the Kremlin on the August 26 attack. Iskander missiles are also pricy at $3mn a piece.

Blackouts

Russia started targeting Ukraine's power infrastructure in November last year and since the beginning of Moscow's full-scale invasion in February 2022, Russian attacks on energy infrastructure have devastated Ukraine’s energy system doing at least $11.5bn worth of damage, Ukraine's Deputy Minister of Energy Svitlana Hrynchuk said in March, leaving nearly 1.5mn Ukrainians without electricity.

Amongst the bigger facilities already knocked out of action are the Dnipro HPP in Zaporizhzhia, which is now in a “critical condition”, according to its director. Russian troops blew up the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant and the adjacent dam in Kherson Oblast on June 6. The Kyiv Hydroelectric Power Plant was also targeted on August 26, but miraculously did not suffer critical damage, Ukrainska Pravda reports.

In Kyiv, the assault led to a blackout during a live broadcast on the Ukrainian television channel Rada, as the presenter read out the latest developments.

Meanwhile, in Moscow, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said the strikes were a “necessary response” to Ukraine's recent incursion into Russia’s Kursk region. He warned that Moscow's retaliation would not be limited to a single strike, stating, "Such hostile actions cannot go unanswered." The attacks also triggered early morning air raid sirens in nine western regions and Kyiv, where residents sought refuge in metro stations. Explosions were reported in at least ten regions, with governors confirming fatalities in four areas.

Ukrainian Energy Minister Herman Halushchenko accused Russia of "terrorising" Ukraine with the strikes, which led to emergency power outages nationwide. The blackouts also affected water supplies in Kyiv and other regions.

As Ukraine dealt with the aftermath, Zelenskiy renewed his call for Western allies to provide long-range weapons and permission to strike deeper into Russian territory, urging the need to "destroy the locations from where Russian missiles are launched." Russia's Defence Ministry later reported that Ukrainian drones had attacked several Russian regions overnight, including Saratov, where a drone struck a residential high-rise, injuring four people. The incident prompted the temporary closure of Saratov's airport and the cancellation of local events.

The power grid: outages vs. exports Just a few days ago on August 23, Ukrenergo, the country’s power grid operator, had announced that Ukraine would resume electricity exports during peak hours of renewable energy generation. This decision followed a major decrease in domestic electricity consumption due to milder weather conditions and the return of a 1 GW nuclear power unit to the grid after scheduled maintenance.

The combination of reduced demand and increased supply had resulted in a surplus of capacity within Ukraine's power system during daytime hours, when solar power plants are at full output.

"To ensure the stable operation of the power system, it is essential to maintain a balance between electricity production and consumption," Ukrenergo had said in its statement. "There are two ways to eliminate this surplus: by limiting generation at solar power plants or by resuming electricity exports during daylight hours." Ukrenergo highlighted that limiting solar power production would be economically unviable. Therefore, the decision had been made to restart electricity exports to neighbouring countries, thereby avoiding restrictions for Ukrainian electricity producers.

Those plans now seem less likely as Yuriy Boiko, an adviser to Ukraine’s Prime Minister and a member of the Supervisory Board of Ukrenergo, the state-owned energy company, stated that the August 26 outages were due to both preventive measures to maintain the balance of the power system and direct damage to power equipment in several regions.

"Electricity restrictions can be associated both with preventive measures and directly with damage to power equipment," Boiko said during a briefing at the Ukrainian media centre in Kyiv. He added that a clearer understanding of the power system's condition would emerge later, allowing officials to provide consumers with more accurate estimates on when power might be restored.