KYIV, Ukraine — Power was reinstated for over 800,000 Kyiv residents on Saturday following widespread outages caused by major Russian attacks on Ukraine’s power grid. These attacks resulted in blackouts across the country, and European leaders have decided to move forward with plans to use hundreds of billions of frozen Russian assets to aid Ukraine’s military efforts.
Ukraine’s largest private energy provider, DTEK, announced Saturday that “the main work to restore the power supply” was finished, although some areas in the Ukrainian capital were still experiencing localized outages due to Friday’s “massive” Russian attacks.
Early Friday, Russian drone and missile strikes injured at least 20 people in Kyiv, damaged residential buildings, and caused blackouts across large areas of Ukraine.
Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko described the attack as “one of the largest concentrated strikes” against Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.
Russia’s Defense Ministry stated on Friday that the strikes targeted energy facilities supplying Ukraine’s military. While they did not specify which facilities were targeted, the ministry noted that Russian forces employed Kinzhal hypersonic missiles and strike drones against these sites.
The energy sector has been a key battleground since Russia launched its all-out invasion more than three years ago.
Each year, as winter approaches, Russia attempts to destabilize the Ukrainian power grid, seemingly aiming to demoralize the public. In Ukraine, winter temperatures span from late October to March, with January and February being the coldest months.
In his nightly address on Friday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy remarked that Russia was exploiting the world’s “almost entire focus on the prospect of establishing peace in the Middle East.” He urged for the enhancement of Ukraine’s air defense systems and called for stricter sanctions on Russia.
“Russian assets must be fully used to strengthen our defense and ensure recovery,” he said in the video, posted to X.
Meanwhile, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said in a joint statement on Friday they were ready to move toward using “in a coordinated way, the value of the immobilised Russian sovereign assets to support Ukraine’s armed forces and thus bring Russia to the negotiation table.”
The statement added they aimed to do this “in close cooperation with the United States.”
Ukraine’s budget and military needs for 2026 and 2027 are estimated to total around 130 billion euros ($153 billion). The European Union has already poured in 174 billion euros (about $202 billion) since the war started in February 2022.
The biggest pot of ready funds available is through frozen Russian assets, most of which is held in Belgium – around 194 billion euros ($225 billion) as of June – and outside the EU in Japan, with around $50 billion, and the U.S., U.K. and Canada with lesser amounts.
Ukraine’s air force said Saturday that its air defenses intercepted or jammed 54 of 78 Russian drones launched against Ukraine overnight, while Russia’s defense ministry said it had shot down 42 Ukrainian drones over Russian territory.
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