Throughout January 2026, amid plummeting temperatures below -15°C, Russian attacks on Ukraine’s heating infrastructure intensified, with the strike on 24 January in Kyiv alone cutting off heating to roughly 6,000 apartment blocks. This is the third such episode in two weeks, also affecting other cities like Zaporizhzhia, where about three-quarters of residents depend on central heating. The attacks exploit the legacy of Soviet urban planning, where large ‘panelki’ apartment blocks rely heavily on centralized heating plants known as TETs. These plants produce both electricity and heat and are thus critical to civilian life. Disabling them causes cascading failures impacting electricity, water, and heating simultaneously. Ukrainian experts describe this as a deliberate Russian tactic that had not been previously used extensively in earlier winters of the war. The Ukrainian government plans to lessen this vulnerability by shifting to individual heating solutions, but decades of infrastructure make this a long-term challenge. The tactic represents a form of hybrid warfare using energy and infrastructure attacks to inflict civilian suffering and pressure Ukrainian society.
Category: Energy & Infrastructure Attacks
Subcategory: Critical Infrastructure Sabotage
Incident Type: Power grids, pipelines
Country: Ukraine
Source report: www.bbc.com/news/arti…
