Attacks on Ukraine’s Energy Infrastructure: Harm to the Civilian Population

Visualizing the Impact: Key findings and photos

Summary:

1. Between 22 March and 31 August 2024, the Russian Federation armed forces launched nine waves of long-range and large-scale coordinated attacks on Ukraine’s electric power system, damaging or destroying numerous power generation, transmission, and distribution facilities. The strikes had reverberating effects causing harm to the civilian population and the country’s electricity supply, water distribution, sewage and sanitation systems, heating and hot water, public health, education, and the economy.
    
2. This harm will take years to fully repair and restore, requiring significant resources from public and private sectors in an economy already burdened by the armed conflict. The attacks have caused additional population displacement and have disproportionately impacted groups in a situation of vulnerability, such as older persons, those with disabilities, households with lower incomes, and the internally displaced, with women particularly affected. Any additional attacks will further compound this harm.
    
3. The upcoming winter period, when electricity consumption increases due to below-freezing temperatures, will exacerbate the foreseeable consequences of these strikes. While Ukrainian authorities, energy companies, and humanitarian and recovery agencies are engaged in immense mitigation efforts to avert a humanitarian crisis, Ukraine will face a significant electricity deficit in the winter, with daily power cuts during the cold months leaving civilians without the electricity they need to power homes, run water pumps and allow children to study online. Some areas may lose heating.
    
4. Quantitative data on the pervasive and interconnected civilian harm resulting from the attacks is still limited and only reflects what has been measured in the short term. Long-term effects, including attributable excess morbidity, will be measured well into the future and will likely exceed the harm already experienced.
    
5. Nonetheless, considering the number of regions affected, the coordinated nature of the attacks, the high precision of the weapons involved, and the sheer scale of harm inflicted on civilians and interconnected civilian systems supplying the population with services essential to their health and survival, the United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine (HRMMU) has assessed that these attacks have been of a widespread and systematic nature. Furthermore, there are reasonable grounds to believe that multiple aspects of the military campaign to damage or destroy Ukraine’s civilian electricity and heat-producing and transmission infrastructure have violated foundational principles of international humanitarian law.