A Russian missile and drone strike on 23 December completely cut power to the Zaporizhstal metallurgical plant, forcing an emergency production shutdown, according to the Metinvest Group press service.
The plant's team switched to alternative power sources and carried out a safe shutdown of production processes following anti-crisis protocols.
The same night, Russian forces attacked two Ukrainian ports in Odesa and Reni, the Administration of Sea Ports of Ukraine reported. "In the Odesa port, a civilian vessel under the flag of Lebanon was damaged by a blast wave. The vessel was transporting Ukrainian soybeans. There were no casualties. There is also damage in the port of Reni – administrative buildings and port infrastructure were affected," according to the ministry's Facebook page.
The State Emergency Service firefighters have been battling flames on the arrested vessel Anka in Reni. "As a result of the attacks, fires broke out and a civilian vessel, a warehouse of a private enterprise were damaged. The roof of a residential building caught fire, a garage on the territory of the private sector was destroyed. In one of the districts, as a result of the strike, windows and roofs were damaged in 122 private houses and glazing in three more apartment buildings," the State Emergency Service reported.
The 23 December night attack left consumers in three oblasts almost completely without power: Rivne, Ternopil and Khmelnytskyi, according to the ministry's morning report. Outages caused by shelling also occurred in Vinnytsia and Zhytomyr oblasts, as well as in frontline regions including Chernihiv, Donetsk, Dnipropetrovsk and Kharkiv oblasts. In Odesa Oblast, a significant number of consumers remained without power after previous strikes.
Emergency blackout schedules were introduced across all liberated territory of Ukraine after the Russian attack. When they will be lifted remains unknown.
The DTEK Group reported that Russians also struck its thermal power plants.
At about 12:15, Rivne Regional Military Administration head Oleksandr Koval reported that power engineers had fully restored electricity supply in Rivne oblast after the Russian attack. Electricity, as in other oblasts of Ukraine, will be supplied according to schedules.
The National Bank sharply worsened its electricity deficit forecast based on October results. While the previous report expected a minimal deficit of about 1% at year-end, it is now estimated that the deficit could reach 4% in the fourth quarter of 2025 and 6% in the first quarter of 2026.
The electricity deficit is also expected to persist throughout 2026 at an average level of 3%. This will limit industry's ability to increase production even if orders and raw materials are available. According to the National Bank's estimates, the electricity deficit could slow Ukraine's GDP growth in 2025 by approximately 0.1 percentage point, and in 2026 by 0.2 percentage points.
On 6 December, after the previous massive Russian attack, the head of Ukrenergo's management board stated that restoring Ukraine's energy system would take weeks. That was the eighth massive missile and drone attack on Ukrainian energy system facilities since the beginning of the year; today's was the ninth.
On the night of 22 December, Russian forces struck the Pivdennyi port, Ukraine's largest. A large-scale fire broke out there.
