The United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine said that Russian air strikes on electricity generation, transmission and distribution facilities in Ukraine constitute a violation of international humanitarian law.
The report, published Thursday, focused on nine waves of attacks between March and August of this year.
The organization said it visited seven power stations damaged or destroyed by the attacks, in addition to 28 local communities affected by the strikes.
“There are reasonable grounds to believe that multiple aspects of the military campaign aimed at damaging or destroying civilian electricity and heat production and transmission infrastructure in Ukraine violated fundamental principles of international humanitarian law,” the report said.
The first major wave of strikes began in 2022, several months after Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February of that year.
The attacks have continued throughout the war, although Moscow has significantly intensified its campaign since last March.
Each wave of strikes has left Ukrainian cities without electricity for hours at a time for weeks at a time.
Ukraine says targeting its energy system is a war crime, and the International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for four Russian officials and military personnel for bombing civilian energy infrastructure.
Russia says the energy infrastructure is a legitimate military target and has dismissed the allegations against its officials as irrelevant.
“Russia is trying to plunge Ukraine into darkness with targeted attacks on its energy systems,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on Thursday, as she announced that 160 million euros ($178 million) in proceeds from frozen Russian assets would be allocated to meet Ukraine’s urgent humanitarian needs this winter.
Russia has destroyed about 9 gigawatts of energy infrastructure in Ukraine, which von der Leyen said was “equivalent to the energy of the three Baltic states.”
She said a coal-fired power plant in Lithuania was being dismantled and would be rebuilt in Ukraine, where 80% of the country’s thermal power plants had been destroyed. A third of Ukraine’s hydroelectric power had been depleted.
The attacks pose risks to Ukraine’s water supply, sanitation and drainage, the provision of heating and hot water, public health, education and the wider economy, the Water Resources Management Unit said.
She highlighted a particular problem in urban areas, where most homes are connected to central heating and hot water systems.
The report stated that about 95 percent of the residents of the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, depend on central heating systems in the basements, which require electric pumps to reach the upper floors of the building.
“The absence of emergency electricity supplies could leave millions of urban residents without heating,” she added.
Ukrainians are expected to suffer power outages lasting between four and 18 hours a day this winter, the state-run Ukrainian News Agency reported, citing experts.
“The hardest test yet”
Separately, the International Energy Agency issued a similarly bleak prediction on Thursday, with IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol saying the coming winter would be the “toughest test yet” for Ukraine’s power grid.
The IEA report stated that in 2022 and 2023, “Russian forces occupied, destroyed or damaged about half of Ukraine’s power generation capacity, and about half of the grid’s large stations were damaged by missiles and drones.”
The report warned of a “huge gap between available electricity supply and peak demand.” It urged European countries to speed up the delivery of equipment and parts needed to rebuild damaged facilities, and called for measures to protect them from drones.
Recent attacks
Ukraine’s national grid operator UkrEnergo said on Thursday that Russia attacked energy infrastructure in Sumy overnight, causing a temporary power outage in the northeastern region.
Ukraine’s air force said Russia attacked nine regions of the country overnight, adding that it shot down 42 drones and one of four missiles.
The governor of the central Dnepropetrovsk region, Sergei Lysak, said the air force shot down a missile over his region, and no one was hurt there.
Kharkiv region governor Oleh Sinyubov said six people were wounded in a Russian attack on the eastern town of Kupiansk, eight kilometres (five miles) from the front line.
He added that the damage was caused to civilian infrastructure, a school, a kindergarten and 10 residential buildings in the city of Kharkiv.
An educational institution was also damaged in the Cherkasy region, regional governor Igor Taborets said.
An elderly woman was killed and two others were wounded in Russian strikes in Ukraine’s Zaporizhia region, the governor of the region, Ivan Fedorov, said on Thursday.
Lavrov said in a tweet on the Telegram instant messaging app that Russian forces had shelled the area 161 times in the past 24 hours, damaging infrastructure and residential buildings.
“victory plan”
Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Wednesday that a “victory plan” aimed at bringing peace to his country while keeping it strong and avoiding all “frozen conflicts” was now complete after much consultation.
Zelensky pledged last month to present his plan to US President Joe Biden, and is expected to do so next week when he attends sessions of the UN Security Council and the UN General Assembly.
Despite providing daily updates on the plan’s development, Zelensky has offered little evidence of its content, suggesting only that it is aimed at creating conditions acceptable to Ukraine.
There is no alternative to peace, Zelensky said in his evening video address, “no freeze in the war or any other manipulation that would simply postpone Russian aggression to another stage.”
