Ukraine: Russian Attacks on Energy Grid Threaten Civilians [EN/UK]

Leveraging Civilian Harm as a Tactic of War; Millions Without Electricity, Water, Heat

(Kyiv, December 6, 2022) – Russian forces’ widespread and repeated targeting of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure appears primarily designed to instill terror among the population in violation of the laws of war, Human Rights Watch said today. Numerous missile and drone attacks in October and November have deprived millions of civilians of at least temporary access to electricity, water, heat, and related vital services ahead of the cold winter months.

The attacks have also killed at least 77 civilians and injured 272. According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the attacks on November 23, 2022 alone killed or injured over 30 civilians and interrupted access to power for millions throughout Ukraine. The entire population of Kyiv, estimated at around 3 million, had no access to water for the day, and parts of Kyiv, Lviv, Zaporizhzhia, and Odesa regions were completely disconnected from electricity, the UN said.

“By repeatedly targeting critical energy infrastructure knowing this will deprive civilians of access to water, heat, and health services, Russia appears to be seeking unlawfully to create terror among civilians and make life unsustainable for them,” said Yulia Gorbunova, senior Ukraine researcher at Human Rights Watch. “With the coldest winter temperatures yet to come, conditions will become more life-threatening while Russia seems intent on making life untenable for as many Ukrainian civilians as possible.”

The laws of war prohibit attacks on objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population and violence or threats, “the primary purpose of which is to spread terror among the civilian population.”

Russian politicians, lawmakers, and other commentators on Russian state media widely applauded the prospect of Ukrainian civilians being left without heat and water in winter. One member of parliament stated that ordinary people should “rot and freeze”, another said the strikes were necessary to destroy the Ukrainian state’s capacity to survive.

Average winter temperatures in Ukraine hover around minus 3 degrees Celsius and can plunge to minus 20 degrees.

Human Rights Watch gathered data from the public domain, analyzed police and fire brigade reports and official statements, and interviewed an energy company official, two energy experts, local authorities, rescue workers, and civilians in Kyiv, Lviv, Kharkiv, Odesa, Kherson, and Mykolaiv, to build a picture of the widespread and cumulative impact of the attacks on the power grid. Human Rights Watch also visited the site of at least one of the attacks that severely damaged civilian homes and killed civilians in November.

On November 16, Ukraine’s office of the prosecutor general reported that Russia had carried out 92 attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure in October and November. Olexander Kharchenko, director of the Energy Industry Research Centre, an independent research and consulting company, told Human Rights Watch that power was disrupted in 10,700,000 households throughout Ukraine, roughly half of the country’s population, due to Russia’s attacks.

According to information posted by DTEK, the largest private energy company in Ukraine, as of November 15, the company’s energy facilities had been attacked 13 times over one and a half months, with significant damage. In a response to a written request from Human Rights Watch, the company also stated that because of Russian attacks on power infrastructure on October 10 alone, more than 40 percent of Ukraine’s energy system had been damaged. The company also said that October and November strikes killed 3 DTEK employees and injured 22.

On November 21, Kharchenko told Human Rights Watch that after strikes on November 15, Ukraine’s overall power-generation capacity had decreased by 50 percent. During the subsequent week, authorities were able to restore only 10 to 20 percent of what had been damaged. He said it was difficult to estimate the overall damage to any particular infrastructure facility because they are interconnected, adding that further strikes, if they happen in quick succession, could result in an uncontrolled blackout, and could take 3 to 10 days to restore the system. “The whole of Ukraine would be without electricity, water, and heating for that period,” he said.

Power infrastructure is considered dual use – military and civilian—and may lawfully be the target of attacks in an armed conflict. However, such attacks are subject to the laws of war, which prohibit indiscriminate or disproportionate attacks. Human Rights Watch is not in a position to assess any concrete and direct military advantage that Russia might have anticipated in conducting the attacks on Ukraine’s electricity and heat-generating grids, nor of any actual military gains made because of these attacks. However, the civilian harm was foreseeable, as is the increasing severity of that harm with the cumulative impact of each strike wave, including on the ability of civilians to remain in Ukraine and survive the winter.

The World Health Organization’s Europe director, in a public statement, expressed grave concern that millions of Ukrainians are without power as winter temperatures drop. He underscored that “continued attacks on health and energy infrastructure mean hundreds of hospitals and health-care facilities are no longer fully operational – lacking fuel, water, and electricity to meet basic needs.” Noting that “cold weather can kill,” he added that the winter ahead “will be about survival.”

Human Rights Watch spoke with a Kyiv resident and full-time caregiver for her parents, who described how lengthy electricity blackouts affected her 75-year-old mother, who has stage 4 lung cancer and is oxygen-dependent: “We have a stationary oxygen concentrator at home that becomes useless when there is no power. Without that, her oxygen levels drop to 70 percent within minutes. If there is no electricity for over two hours, we are trapped and all I can do is watch my mother struggling to breathe.” Sustained blood oxygen levels at 70 percent could result in organ damage and death.

Her family has crowdsourced funds for a car battery which can keep the concentrator working for two hours. But it is not sufficient, she said, because power cuts can last for hours. A Ukrainian charity recently gave her mother a portable concentrator that has a charge of up to six hours, but, as she said, such concentrators are in very limited supply in Ukraine: “I understand that someone else who is oxygen-dependent might urgently need it soon,” she said. “Maybe a child with cystic fibrosis or another cancer patient. And then what are we going to do?”

According to the United Nations humanitarian agency, the attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure also affected water pumping, “adding to the previous challenges faced by millions of people to access clean water or run their heating systems at home.”

A 34-year-old Kyiv resident who lives with her 84-year-old mother said that her family was concerned about surviving the cold in their flat during the winter, when the temperature in Ukraine drops below zero, as well as about “cooking meals, especially for families who have small children or care for older people, and storing food when refrigerators don’t work for prolonged periods of time.”

The International Committee of the Red Cross Commentary on Additional Protocol 1, to which both Russia and Ukraine are parties, notes that although attacks on facilities that provide services to civilians but also direct support to military action can be legitimate, attacks and acts of destruction that are bound to have such serious effects on the civilian population that they would die or be forced to move, are not. The commentary also states that the laws of war “prohibit acts of violence the primary purpose of which is to spread terror among the civilian population without offering substantial military advantage. … This calls to mind some of the proclamations made in the past threatening the annihilation of civilian populations.”

“Russia continues to flagrantly bomb energy infrastructure all over the country, putting millions of Ukrainian civilians’ security and, in some cases, their very survival, on the line,” Gorbunova said.

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