Last winter, many expected Ukraine’s energy system to collapse. Russia had spent the months approaching the winter season conducting its most intensive bombing campaign of Ukraine’s power infrastructure, destroying or damaging a significant share of the country’s generating capacity. Some suggested an energy collapse could hand Putin victory in a war he was unable to win on the battlefield.
We now know this did not happen. Instead, Ukraine kept the lights on and the heat running through the most difficult winter in its modern history. That outcome was not down to good luck or mild weather. It was the result of a comprehensive, battle-tested system for defending, hardening, decentralizing, and rapidly restoring energy infrastructure under sustained attack.
Ukraine has spent the past four years building an energy system capable of surviving in extremely challenging wartime conditions. This energy resilience is a valuable strategic asset that offers important lessons for the wider international community.
In recent months, Iranian drones have struck oil refineries in Saudi Arabia, LNG facilities in Qatar, and fuel terminals in the UAE and Bahrain. These attacks underlined the fact that energy infrastructure is now a priority target. Ukraine has been aware of this new military reality for more than four years and moved rapidly in spring 2026 to share its expertise, deploying over two hundred counter-drone specialists to the UAE, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Jordan.
Multiple Gulf countries have now signed formal defense cooperation agreements with Ukraine. Saudi Aramco is in active talks to purchase Ukrainian interceptor drones and electronic warfare systems. The knowledge Ukraine is sharing with Gulf region partners did not come from a laboratory or a research institute. It emerged under fire in a climate of relentless wartime innovation.
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Why has Ukraine’s approach proved effective? The foundation is layered defense. Rather than protecting every asset equally, Ukraine prioritized the facilities whose loss would be most catastrophic. This includes nuclear plants, major thermal generation, and key transmission substations. Ukraine has built overlapping defensive coverage around these key assets.
Long-range systems intercept ballistic missiles. Medium-range systems handle cruise missiles and larger drones. Short-range mobile units engage the low altitude drone swarms that have become Russia’s preferred instrument of attack. In parallel, electronic warfare systems disrupt navigation and targeting. Together, these measures have made Ukraine far harder to knock offline than Russia calculated.
Alongside an active air defense network, Ukraine has invested in fortifying infrastructure that cannot be moved. Blast walls, reinforced enclosures, and protected housing for critical components including transformers, turbines, and control systems have reduced the consequences of strikes that penetrate defenses. Some command and control functions have moved underground. Ukraine’s approach reflects the assumption that some attacks will always get through, with an emphasis on ensuring any damage is contained.
Decentralization has been equally important. Before the war, Ukraine’s power system relied on large, centralized electricity generation assets. These are exactly the kind of high-value fixed targets an adversary finds attractive. Ukraine has systematically moved away from that model, deploying small modular gas turbines, rooftop solar installations, battery storage systems, and microgrids capable of operating independently when the main grid comes under attack. Distributed generation does not eliminate vulnerability, but it dramatically reduces the strategic value of any single strike.
Perhaps the most underappreciated element of Ukraine’s energy resilience is the capacity for rapid repair. When Russia’s most intensive bombing campaign destroyed nine gigawatts of generating capacity, Ukrainian energy sector engineers restored four gigawatts within months. This was possible because Ukraine had pre-positioned critical spare components, trained rapid response repair units, and built tight coordination between energy companies, government agencies, and military authorities.
Since 2022, Ukraine has also learned that communications in a conflict environment require a different kind of discipline. Publicly announcing alternative gas routes or storage injection volumes made those assets targets. Aggregated operational data, transparently reported in peacetime, becomes targeting intelligence in wartime.
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Taken together, the wartime measures adopted by Ukraine to prevent an energy collapse form a coherent framework: Defend what you can intercept, harden what you cannot move, distribute what you can decentralize, repair faster than the adversary can destroy, and manage information as a strategic asset. This strategy has kept the country functioning under the most sustained infrastructure attack in modern history. Crucially, the measures adopted by Ukraine are all directly transferable.
The Gulf states are already drawing on Ukraine’s experience. The United States and Europe should be doing the same. They cannot afford to assume their own energy systems will remain safely removed from the battlefield.
The FBI recently uncovered an alleged Iranian plot to conduct drone attacks against targets in California. Although the report did not identify targets, the plot reflects a broader Iranian pattern of using drones and missiles to threaten critical infrastructure, particularly the energy systems of US allies and partners throughout the Gulf.
Meanwhile, Russia has been probing European energy assets directly. The Kremlin’s shadow fleet has surveilled nuclear facilities in the UK, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. Earlier this year, Britain deployed warships to disrupt Russian surveillance of critical underwater pipelines. The threat is not approaching. It is already here.
Energy companies in Europe and the United States should at minimum be simulating attacks on their own facilities today, testing reaction times and identifying any potential gaps before an adversary does. Governments need emergency procurement and regulatory frameworks that can operate at wartime speed. Critical spare components need to be pre-positioned, not ordered after the first strike.
Ukraine is preparing training programs for partner countries covering infrastructure security, emergency procurement, crisis governance, and information management. This training initiative underlines Ukraine’s remarkable transition from aid recipient to security provider. Those who still treat energy resilience as a technical matter are not prepared for the changes currently taking place in military doctrine. Thanks to Ukraine, the blueprint to address this vulnerability exists.
Oleksii Riabchyn is the Chief International and Sustainability Officer at Naftogaz. He previously served as Ukraine’s Deputy Minister for Energy and Environmental Protection and as a member of the Ukrainian Parliament, where he chaired the Subcommittee on Energy Saving and Energy Efficiency.
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The views expressed in UkraineAlert are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Atlantic Council, its staff, or its supporters.
The Eurasia Center’s mission is to enhance transatlantic cooperation in promoting stability, democratic values, and prosperity in Eurasia, from Eastern Europe and Turkey in the West to the Caucasus, Russia, and Central Asia in the East.
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