Russian attacks on Ukraine’s power grid will continue without President Trump’s intervention, Ukraine’s top energy official has warned, as millions of people risk a freezing winter without power.
DTEK’s Maxim Timchenko spoke out as Ukraine braced for further Russian drone and missile attacks on its energy infrastructure and a day after Trump met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for the third time to end the nearly four-year war.
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US President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky shake hands at a press conference after a meeting at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club on December 28, 2025 in Palm Beach, Florida. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
“We are very grateful to President Trump for his leadership. We believe that he and his team are the only ones who can force Russia to negotiate and stop the war, together with the support of our partners in the European Union and other countries,” said the CEO of DTEK.
DTEK, founded by Ukrainian entrepreneur Rinat Akhmetov, is Ukraine’s largest private energy company and a backbone of the country’s power supply.
Before the large-scale invasion of Russia in 2022, the company operated eight thermal power plants. Three were later occupied by Russian troops.
“Today we operate five power stations, and each of them has been attacked at least five times since the large-scale invasion,” Timchenko confirmed.
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A salesperson waits for customers in a store during a partial power outage in Lviv on November 28, 2024, following Russian attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. (Yuriy Dyachyshyn/AFP via Getty Images)
He described the damage as unprecedented. “The level of destruction is unparalleled to any energy system in the world. Nothing like this has happened in modern history,” he said.
At one point, he said, nearly all of DTEK’s generating capacity was damaged or destroyed, with losses totaling hundreds of millions of dollars.
“And I can say that at any given time 90% of our generating capacity has been damaged or destroyed,” he explained.
“Because of this destruction, we lost hundreds of millions of dollars in direct damage, not to mention lost revenue. So just for 2025, our recovery budget was about $220 million, but if you look from the beginning of the large-scale invasion, I say it’s hundreds, hundreds of millions of dollars,” Timchenko said.
Despite the devastation and losses he faced, his company has repeatedly restored power to millions of Ukrainians.
“Since 2022, we have managed to reconnect more than 30 million households and customers,” said Timchenko. “We fight and we are fast.”
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A drone hits an apartment building in Kiev during the Russian attack on Ukraine on Saturday, December 27, 2025. (Gleb Garanich/Reuters)
“The past two years have been extremely difficult. The attacks have become so intense and we live in a crisis mode every day because our equipment has been destroyed, the power stations have been damaged and all we are thinking about is how to restore power supply as quickly as possible,” Timchenko said.
He also added that recovery efforts include resuming gas drilling, continuing construction of Eastern Europe’s largest wind farm and building a large battery storage system with US company Fluence.
Otherwise, in Odesa, for example, around 600,000 people were affected by power outages, while some neighborhoods were without power for days.
But Russia’s latest large-scale attack came on December 26, when missiles and drones hit Kiev and surrounding areas, cutting off electricity to more than 1 million people in freezing temperatures.
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DTEK says it has restored power to 30 million Ukrainian households despite repeated Russian attacks on critical energy infrastructure. (Reuters)
“People have learned how to live without necessary amenities like electricity,” Timchenko said.
“The temperature in Kiev was minus 10 degrees and because of this attack we could not get water, no heat, and of course there is no electricity.
“They attacked us with ballistic and Kalibr missiles and calibers, then with 500 drones and other types of missiles,” he added.
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Looking ahead, Timchenko emphasized Ukraine’s dependence on continued support.
“The energy system is at the heart of this struggle. Modern life simply cannot exist without electricity. We need continued global support,” he added.
