Since early January, Ukrainian drone and artillery forces have attacked regional energy generation and public heating infrastructure in the western Russian region of Belgorod in a month-long bombardment campaign that has forced local authorities to call for mass evacuations.
The raids mixing domestically developed kamikaze aircraft with NATO state-manufactured long-range artillery – rockets or missiles have hit Belgorod targets at least six times with complex attacks. Most of the region’s major power and heating facilities have been struck repeatedly.
Belgorod governor Vyacheslav Gladkov, in Wednesday’s public comments, called the state of power and heating deliveries in the region home to some 1.4 million people “extremely difficult, critical, and prolonged.” In public announcements, Gladkov over the weekend called the situation with power and heating in Belgorod “almost catastrophic.”
On Monday, Gladkov’s office issued a public warning calling on parents living in unheated homes to evacuate their children, and if possible, the entire family from the city. According to Belgorod regional news media, on Wednesday, apartment blocks in the eastern, central, and western districts of the city will be without heat for at least a week.
Belgorod energy company officials on Tuesday reported rolling blackouts across the city, imposed over the weekend and affecting practically all homes and businesses, would continue for the foreseeable future. Reportedly, around 80,000 Belgorod city residents, about one-quarter of the city’s pre-war 320,000 population, were living in buildings that authorities no longer were able to heat and whose electricity service was unreliable.
Predictions of temperatures well below freezing for most of February have obliged city managers to cut off heat to 455 apartment buildings, 25 kindergartens, 17 schools, nine polyclinics and four universities cut off from central heating, an official statement said.
Aside from people and buildings unheated because of damage to the city heating plant, an additional 100,000 city residents were cut off from water deliveries to their homes because power shortages had left water main pumps unable to maintain sufficient pressure, forcing authorities to drain central heating pipes of water to prevent radiators and pipes from freezing, a Feb. 8 public announcement from Gladkov’s office said.
Most heavily targeted by Ukrainian strike teams has been a critical piece of the Belgorod power grid, the city’s main Luch Thermal Power Plant (Russian: ТЭЦ “Луч”). a 60 MW gas-turbine facility hit at least twice during January and suffering critical strikes on Feb. 7-8.
Satellite imagery of the station reaching open sources only hours after the latest round of attacks by drones and rockets showed both of the plant’s gas turbines, each rated to produce 30 MW of power, damaged from direct drone hits penetrating the station’s roof. The facility turbine hall, based on that imagery, appeared demolished as well.
Initial strikes hitting that power plant killed electricity deliveries to a reported 500,000 residents, but power company technicians had repaired most of the damage by late January. Gladkov, in comments following a follow-up wave of Ukrainian strikes hitting nightly from Feb. 2-7, said that efforts to repair the Luch plant and return it to operation had “not given the desired results” and that the station will require “prolonged repairs” before full heat supply can resume.
Also repeatedly hit and damaged has been the Belgorod Combined Heat and Power Plant (BCHPP), a gas-fired facility delivering 60 MW to consumers and heating to about one-third of the city, particularly Belgorod’s northern and central districts. Smaller strikes by drones or precision-guided weapons have set afire highly inflammable substations and difficult-to-repair grid nodes, including the city’s major Frunzenskaya and Dragunskaya substations, the city’s main electricity distribution centers.
Repairs to the BCHPP station turbines could require delivery to Russia of replacement parts to the General Electric (GE) LM2500 power blocks installed at the plant in the 1950s. That delivery likely would be complicated because GE, following Russia’s second invasion of Ukraine in 2022, fully suspended operations in Russia, and in June 2023, GE ended service for and parts supply to GE power production equipment used by Russian utility companies.
Reports and video uploaded by Belgorod residents since Jan. 10 has documented Ukrainian use of domestically developed Liuty and Bobr kamikaze drones, and US-made M-2 precision-guided artillery rockets for attacks against Belgorod targets. Some Belgorod social media, echoed by Russian milbloggers, claimed that British/French cruise missiles were used at least twice, on Jan. 26 and Feb. 5, but Kyiv Post was unable to confirm the claims.
Russia’s Defense Ministry has acknowledged repeated Ukrainian drone and “missile” attacks against “civilian targets” in Belgorod. Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces (USF) in statements have credited its 1st USF Center, a long-range strike group reflagged from the elite 14th USF Regiment, as a unit launching drone strikes against the power grid and heating infrastructure in Belgorod.
Russian long-range attacks against Ukraine have been orders of magnitude greater than the narrow Ukrainian bombardment campaign against Belgorod. According to Ukrainian Air Force counts, in the 30 days prior to Feb. 11, Russia launched approximately 4,400 drones and 25 missiles at targets across Ukraine in January, and about 1,100 drones and 160 missiles during the first ten days of February. Those strikes centered on the Ukrainian capital Kyiv but also targeted the cities of Kharkiv, Vinnytsia, Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk, Rivne, Volyn, Zaporizhzhia, Sumy, Chernihiv, and Odesa.
The Russian strikes, according to government and media reports, killed at least 30 Ukrainian civilians directly by blast in the ongoing Kremlin bombardment campaign. An additional but undetermined number of mostly infirm Ukrainian civilians died as a result of the Russian strikes because of insufficient medical treatment to injury or sickness, which was aggravated by cold exposure.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in a Sunday evening national video address, said that Ukrainian attacks against Russian heating infrastructure and power grid are hitting legitimate military targets, because Russia’s civilian infrastructure delivers resources the Russian military uses to attack Ukraine.
“We do not have to choose whether we strike a military target or energy; it’s the same thing,” Zelensky said. “We either build weapons or strike their weapons. Or we strike the source where their money is generated and multiplied…Russia’s energy makes money for Russia to fund weapons that are used against us.”
In the pre-war period, one of Russia’s wealthiest regions, Belgorod, and its industries suffered from proximity to Ukraine and almost-nightly drone attacks or overflights. Ukrainian targeting of the Belgorod region’s power grid and oil and gas industry has most affected production in the region’s ore-processing, chemical, and metallurgical industries, as well as state institutions dependent on the tax base from big businesses. Aside from long-range strikes, Ukrainian combat units in Ukraine’s northern Kharkiv routinely target roads and military units on the far side of the border in Russia.