Repeated Russian attacks on Ukraine’s national power grid could uproot 500,000 people by next winter, UN human rights monitors say.
The warning from the United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine comes after the major damage to power plants and the worsening of the energy crisis, which It has affected access to electricity, drinking water and heating, while driving up prices for consumers..
Attacks on the national grid included a coordinated attack on August 26, which the Mission describes in a new report as one of Russia’s largest since the start of the full-scale invasion, involving “more than 100 missiles and 100 drones across numerous regions of Ukraine, primarily targeting power and other infrastructure. Power outages were implemented across the country to stabilise the grid.”
There have been “nine waves of coordinated, large-scale, long-range attacks” against Ukraine’s electric power system between March 22 and August 31, 2024, the report said. These have damaged or destroyed “numerous power generation, transmission, and distribution facilities” and caused damage to the civilian population and to the country’s electricity supply, water distribution, sewage and sanitation systems, heating and hot water, public health, education, and economy.
The report further cites estimates that recent attacks on energy infrastructure have “put more than 10% of the population, or 3.7 million people, at risk of consuming contaminated drinking water. Risks are increased for infants and young children, the elderly, immunocompromised individuals, and those with significant comorbidities.”
High voltage shocks
Since March 2024, Russian attacks have reached facilities in 20 of the 24 regions under Ukrainian control, including the capital, kyiv. There were 36 attacks on power plants in nine regions and at least 101 confirmed attacks on electricity distribution and transmission facilities in 17 regions. “Many energy facilities were repeatedly attacked, some to the point of total destruction,” the report said, noting that “it will take years to fully repair and restore them.”
Citing data from the National Bank of Ukraine, the Mission shows that prior to the large-scale Russian invasion on 24 February 2022, Ukraine had 44.1 gigawatts of available electricity capacity, through its nuclear, thermal and hydroelectric power plants, as well as renewable sources. But by April 2023, the Ukrainian national grid had lost almost half of its available production capacity due to the occupation and destruction. In addition, 42 of its 95 high-voltage transformers were damaged, disrupting the distribution of electricity to households.
Fears of forced displacement
According to the UN refugee agency (UNHCR), more than 6.7 million Ukrainians have fled the country since the Russian invasion. Some 6.2 million remain in Europe and another 3.6 million remain displaced within Ukraine. UNHCR considers it “unlikely” that these numbers will decrease soon.
Border surveillance by the agency and its partners showed a slight increase in departures from Ukraine since April this year, linked to a lack of access to electricity, water and heating. But “that increase increased markedly” in June to reach one in four respondents, as power cuts became more frequent. In July, Almost half of the people contacted at the Ukrainian border said they were leaving because of the difficulty in accessing electricity, water and heating..
“Most of those leaving for energy-related reasons intend to stay abroad temporarily, but for unknown periods,” UNHCR said.
Economy and education
Beyond the foreseeable exodus of people from Ukraine, the attacks have also severely affected education. In July 2024, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) calculated that Between 78 and 311 million hours of study have been lost per month due to power outages.
Following the initial waves of attacks in March 2024, the National Bank of Ukraine estimated that the national economy would contract by 0.6%. By June 2024, electricity prices had risen by more than two-thirds. The country’s government estimated that high electricity costs would add 1.2% to consumer inflation and 6% in additional costs for producers.
The UN Mission stated that in view of the large number of regions affected by the coordinated attacks, “the high precision of the weapons employed and the enormous scale of the damage inflicted on the civilian population and on the interconnected civilian systems that provide the population with services essential for their health and survival (…) there are reasonable grounds to believe that multiple aspects of the military campaign to damage or destroy the Ukrainian civilian infrastructure for the production and transmission of electricity and heat have violated fundamental principles of international humanitarian law.”
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