Why Ukraine’s heating is so vulnerable to Russian strikes

A centralized heating system made sense to the Soviet Union, but now this legacy means that Ukraine risks freezing over the winter due to attacks. Yevdokiia survived a similar disaster before.

Alchevsk, Luhansk region in Ukraine, winter of 2006. Source: BBC.

The bitter cold pierced the Ukrainian city of Alchevsk to the bone back in January 2006.

The temperature had dropped to -35°C (-31°F), and the entire city found itself without heating. At these temperatures, the National Weather Service estimates frostbite can develop in just 5 to 30 minutes, depending on the wind.

Radiators burst inside buildings as the chill spread. Steam wafted out of people’s mouths as they sipped tea that was constantly being brewed to keep their bodies warm.

Yevdokiia had no choice but to pull her hat down over her eyes and wrap herself in her coat under thick blankets. She pressed close to her husband against the background noise of sports broadcasts. The warmth of a fellow human body was the only thing that kept her from going numb.

Here’s the problem: unlike many other places in the world, the Soviet Union relied on centralized heating systems, where entire cities were kept warm by steam produced in a single spot and then distributed to apartments across a broad area. It’s good for efficiency, but easily targeted in a war, and very vulnerable to centralized mechanical failures.

The 2006 heating pipeline accident in Alchevsk, in the Luhansk region was perhaps the first time Ukrainians felt so intensely just how badly the Soviet heating system could backfire.

A city of 100,000 people was left without heating for an entire month after a major pipeline burst, plunging entire households into the freezing cold. The fully centralized heating system built back in Soviet times proved to be extremely vulnerable to failures at its main facilities.

This weakness imperils Ukraine even more today. Russia has started attacking energy and heating hubs as the cold winter months begin, Ukraine’s Energy Ministry warned recently. Overnight, Russia has launched a major attack on Kyiv using 333 Shahed drones and 11 ballistic missiles to attack heating plants all over the country. Emergency outages are already being implemented across Ukraine. Targeting this infrastructure is an easy way for Moscow to make the wartime environment miserable.

Ukraine’s near-total reliance on centralized heating infrastructure has become an Achilles’ heel when attacks on critical infrastructure are used as a weapon of war. This is a lesson for Europe as well, which also depends on centralized electricity and heating systems. In the event of direct aggression, Russia would likely wage war using similar methods to those employed in Ukraine.

Yevdokiia Kubukhova with her grandchildren.

Life in Alchevsk will forever be a bright memory for Yevdokiia Kubukhova, who is now 64. It was the city of her youth, the place where she and her husband raised two children. Yevdokiia kept this sentiment despite its industrial grayness: it was compact and cozy. Every May, they would go see their son’s dance performances before taking him out for ice cream, her heart overflowing with pride and love.

This city even gave her the courage to change her profession at 40, joining the Alchevsk Iron and Steel Works to help process steel used for rebar. She could not imagine she would quickly fall in love with her hot workshop.

For Yevdokiia, Alchevsk will always be home — even though it’s one to which she can never return.

The winter of 2006 was unlike any other in Alchevsk, unusually snowy and bitterly frigid – one of the coldest Januarys on record. It was particularly bad timing for one of the worst technological disasters to strike independent Ukraine, then just fifteen years old.

President of Ukraine Viktor Yushchenko looks at destroyed central heating radiators as he examines repair work on central heating in the city of Alchevsk, January 30, 2006. (Photo credit should read MYKOLA LAZARENKO/AFP via Getty Images).

For those living in the U.S., where most homes have individual heating systems, it’s hard to grasp how an entire city can freeze because one or two heating plants shut down.

But Ukraine’s system works differently. Before the war, about half of all apartment buildings were heated centrally. In most large Ukrainian cities, heat comes from a centralized heat and power plant, which produces hot water or steam that is then transported through pipes to warm homes and apartments.

This system was designed back in the Soviet Union and spread across major cities in the 1930s–1950s. In a centralized country, this had a certain logic: managing a few extensive facilities was far easier than maintaining hundreds of small ones. And individuality was discouraged in the Soviet Union – even when it came to heating.

While this system is energy-efficient and cheap, it remains highly vulnerable to direct attacks. Many combined heat and power plants were built during the Cold War – but the ever-present threat of war wasn’t enough to dissuade Soviet planners.

“They were preparing for nuclear war back then… So they focused on protecting defense industries and government leadership, building multi-story underground structures,” explained Roman Nitsovych, research director at the DiXi Group think tank. “Supplying power to ordinary citizens wasn’t a priority in that scenario.”

This Soviet legacy left Ukraine’s heating systems prone to breakdowns even without Russian attacks. Pipes often burst, apartments flooded with boiling water, and heating seasons started late. But now, two decades after the Alchevsk tragedy, that nightmare scenario threatens to repeat itself on a larger scale.

Yevdokiia remembers all too well how the disaster unfolded.

“I was at work then. I worked shifts at the factory. They said the boiler plants had frozen. When I came home, the pipes were already cold,” she recalled.

She hated mornings that year; crawling out from under the blankets was pure torture.

She would heat heavy iron objects on the gas stove just to feel a bit of warmth. Her cozy first-floor apartment grew emptier as her son, like many other children, was evacuated with his class and teachers to Crimea. Her daughter spent her days at university lectures, which continued despite the heating catastrophe.

“We heated [the home] with gas and electric appliances, but [the local authorities] asked us not to overuse them — the grid was overloaded. There were many fires; a few families burned to death,” Yevdokiia told The Counteroffensive.

Electricity use in the city increased tenfold, and at any moment, people risked being left not only without heat, but also in complete darkness.

Berezniaky and Rusanivka neighborhoods experience a blackout caused by a massive Russian strike on the city’s critical infrastructure in Kyiv, Ukraine, on October 10, 2025. (Photo by Evgen Kotenko/Ukrinform/NurPhoto via Getty Images).

Yevdokiia had dreaded coming home from work. In a strange turn of fate, the metal at the plant, heated to a thousand degrees, offered much-needed warmth.

She couldn’t have known back then that twenty years later, another cold winter would be brewing. But this time, not because of an accident or even incompetence – this time it was because it was a malicious Russian strategy of war.

Russia has been systematically attacking gas infrastructure and thermal power plants not just to damage them, but to destroy them outright. By wiping out these facilities and cutting regions off from the central energy grid, Ukraine’s eastern and northern regions would become just short of unlivable. As of October, Russia has already destroyed about 60 percent of Ukraine’s gas production, forcing the country to spend over $2 billion on imports to survive this winter.

Firefighters battle flames at a thermal power plant following a series of explosions on October 10, 2025 in Kyiv, Ukraine. (Photo by Kostiantyn Liberov/Libkos/Getty Images).

Protecting energy facilities has become extremely difficult for Ukraine, since there is no air defense system that offers full protection from ballistic missiles and drones. And according to Nitsovych, critical energy sites were originally designed to withstand debris, not direct attacks.

So Ukrainians are once again forced to stock up on portable power banks to survive the coming winter. The sad, droning hum of generators will mark the times when the neighborhood lacks power; mixing in with the sounds of buzzing drones in the sky which aim to make the situation worse.

For Yevdokiia, Russia has already taken too much — her hometown of Alchevsk was occupied back in the spring of 2014, one of the first cities in the Donetsk region to fall to Russian forces.

In 2015, she and her husband moved to the village of Rossohuvatka in the Cherkasy region, where they bought a plot of land. She jokes that she didn’t know how to grow potatoes, so she planted lavender instead.

Yevdokiia Kubukhova holds her lavender.

“Lavender calms me down. When I think of Alchevsk or wonder when this war will end, what will happen to us next, I go out to the field. There are bees, the air, the smell — incredible. Such beauty, you just forget everything. I love it like my children,” she said.

Her son still tells her to let go of Alchevsk, though it’s hard for Yevdokiia to do.

Yet she remains optimistic, even as winter approaches. Her house now has a stove, chopped firewood, gas, and an oven. And life in Alchevsk already taught her how to survive a harsh winter.

“We’re not afraid,” she said. “The Russians won’t see us give up — our people know how to prepare.”

NEWS OF THE DAY:

By: Anastasiia Kryvoruchenko; Oleksandra Khelemendyk.

Good morning to readers; Kyiv remains in Ukrainian hands.

NO WH-KREMLIN SUMMIT SOON: Trump said his summit in Hungary doesn’t make sense anymore, The Washington Post reported. Trump already had a phone call with Putin and right after held a meeting with Zelenskyy. Both conversations showed that the sides are too far from reaching an agreement on a peace deal.

Russia sent a communique to the White House, in which it repeated its demands: Russia wants all the Donbas region, which contradicts Trump’s demand to freeze the front line.

RUSSIA REFINES OIL IN GEORGIA: Due to effective Ukrainian drone attacks on Russian oil refineries, Russia started to ship crude oil to a new refinery in Georgia, Reuters reported. On October 6, a Russia’s shadow fleet tanker delivered about 105,000 metric tons of oil to the Kulevi Oil Terminal in Western Georgia on the Black Sea coast.

Georgia severed its diplomatic ties with Russia in 2008 when Moscow-backed troops invaded Georgian regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. However, the ruling Georgian Dream party seeks to deepen economic ties with Russia. Georgians still officially continue their protests, although with smaller scale; the opposition to the pro-Russian party rose in the beginning of October, after the Georgian Dream froze the negotiation to enter the EU until 2028.

Since August, Ukrainian drones have hit at least 28 key refineries in Russia. According to the International Energy Agency, the impact of such attacks will be notable well into 2026.

UKRAINE, EU PREPARE 12-POINT PEACE PLAN: Ukraine and its European partners are preparing a 12-point plan by freezing the front line in its current state and halting further territorial gains, Bloomberg reported. This document is being drafted as Putin has presented opposite demands to Washington.

The Ukraine-EU plan will include a ceasefire and the cessation of territorial seizures, the return of abducted Ukrainian children and a POW exchange, the provision of financial aid to Ukraine for post-war recovery, and accelerated accession to the EU.

It also includes the gradual lifting of sanctions on Russia, except for the 300 billion dollars in frozen assets, which Russia will receive only after contributing to Ukraine’s reconstruction.

DOG OF WAR:

This fluffy pup, accidentally spotted in the cafe, is also trying to warm up from the unfolding cold. He represents all of The Counteroffensive team members :’)

Stay safe out there!

Best,
Mariana