On 5 March, The Kyiv Independent reported that Ukraine had resumed electricity exports for the first time since November 2025. That is the clearest signal yet that the grid held through another winter. But it is not a sign of recovery.
The question heading into spring is not whether Ukraine survived the winter, but what kind of country it is now.
All 15 of Ukraine’s thermal power plants have been damaged or destroyed. Industrial output contracted in 2025. Energy costs for businesses now exceed those in Europe. And even as winter ended, Russian drones were already averaging six railway strikes a day. The question heading into spring is not whether Ukraine survived the winter—it did—but what kind of country it is now, and what Russia is targeting next.
ISW assessed on 3 March that Russia fell short on every strategic objective it pursued this winter: splitting the grid into isolated energy islands, halting Ukraine’s defense industrial base, and rendering Kyiv uninhabitable.
President Zelenskyy told Corriere della Sera the same day that Russia failed to divide Ukrainian society or turn the public against the fight. Strategic failure is the right word—but it does not mean the campaign cost nothing.
Neither broken nor recovering
Before the full-scale invasion, thermal power plants generated 23.5% of Ukraine’s electricity. By winter 2025–2026, that share had collapsed to around 5%, as all 15 facilities sustained damage or destruction over three years of strikes.
Direct damage to Ukraine’s energy sector has reached close to $25 billion, with reconstruction needs for the entire energy sector estimated at nearly $91 billion—a figure that grew 21% in a single year—according to a joint assessment by the World Bank, European Commission, UN, and Ukrainian government.
Going into this heating season, the IEA reported that Ukraine had restored about 3 GW of capacity since the previous winter’s low point of 12 GW, with the Ministry of Energy anticipating approximately 17.6 GW of total generating capacity available—close to winter peak demand.
“Ukraine’s energy system is not broken, but it operates in a mode of constant degradation and patching.”
That margin was then eaten into by continued Russian strikes throughout the season. The grid stayed intact, but at a cost measured in constant patching, emergency imports from Europe, and ongoing blackouts for civilians and industry alike.
“Ukraine’s energy system is not broken, but it operates in a mode of constant degradation and patching,” Olena Lapenko told Euromaidan Press. The pattern, she said, is wave-like: escalation, stabilization, new strikes.
Recovery to pre-war conditions is measured in years, not weeks.
“Russians haven’t achieved their strategic goal, but they have tactical successes—creating chronic instability. This is a war of attrition,” said Lapenko, general manager for security and resilience at DiXi Group. Recovery to pre-war conditions, she added, is measured in years, not weeks—contingent on repair speed, temperatures, and the pace of future attacks.
The industrial toll
Ukraine’s industrial output fell 2.4% in 2025, dragging real GDP growth down to 1.8%—below most forecasts. The Centre for Economic Strategy attributed the weaker-than-expected recovery directly to Russia’s attacks on energy infrastructure.
By 2025, energy costs for industrial consumers in Ukraine exceeded those in Europe—the result of expensive imports and rising domestic tariffs. For an economy trying to compete on exports, that is a structural problem, not a temporary one.
Lucio Genovese called Q4 2025 “one of the most challenging for the business and employees since the full-scale invasion.”
Ferrexpo, Ukraine’s largest iron ore pellet producer and a key supplier to steelmakers in Austria, Germany, and the Czech Republic, cut output by 47% in 2025—from 6.07 million to 3.2 million tons—as strikes starved its Poltava plants of power.
Acting CEO Lucio Genovese called Q4 2025 “one of the most challenging for the business and employees since the full-scale invasion.” Black Sea export routes remain blocked; the company ships rail-only to European customers—along the same network now under daily attack.
Ukraine’s agricultural sector contracted 5.1% in 2025, with livestock production falling as blackouts disabled ventilation systems and refrigeration chains.
Ukraine must meet EU pig welfare standards—while Russian missiles knock out farm electricity
According to the OECD, defense spending consumes 25% of GDP, with the budget deficit running near 20% of GDP—putting public debt on a trajectory toward 120% of GDP during 2026, up from 50% in 2021. All civilian expenditures remain entirely dependent on Western aid. The current account deficit ballooned from 8.4% of GDP in 2024 to 16.2% in 2025, as imports grew 21% while exports fell 4%.
The Kyiv School of Economics Institute assessed in February that Ukraine’s total war losses reached $1.7 trillion—three times its prewar GDP. Trade accounted for $696.3 billion in lost revenue; industry, construction, and services lost $645.6 billion; agriculture $81.9 billion.
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Russia turns to railways and water
ISW assessed on 2 March that Russia is preparing strikes on Ukraine’s water supply—a shift the institute described as an implicit acknowledgment that the energy campaign failed. Water systems share the same Soviet-era design vulnerabilities that made electrical substations susceptible to drone strikes with smaller warheads.
The railway campaign is already underway. Since the start of March, Russian forces have averaged six strikes per day on Ukrainian rail infrastructure. Ukrzaliznytsia reported a passenger carriage set ablaze at Mykolaiv station and a drone narrowly missing a locomotive on the Dnipro–Kovel route—rolling stock, the railway said, is now a primary target.
The strikes are deliberate: blocking evacuation routes while trapping civilians in major cities to force social unrest and pressure Ukraine into capitulation.
Two days earlier, a drone struck a passenger train in motion, killing one person. Air transport has been suspended since 2022. The railway is Ukraine’s only civilian long-distance network, moving Western weapons, evacuees, and humanitarian cargo.
Military expert Dmytro Snehyriov told Kyiv24 that the strikes are deliberate: blocking evacuation routes while trapping civilians in major cities to force social unrest and pressure Ukraine into capitulation.
The one sector that grew
ISW’s assessment of 3 March found that Ukraine’s defense industrial base had grown 50-fold since 2022, reaching an estimated $50 billion in output. More than 75% of weapons procurement now goes to domestic manufacturers, with 7 million drones targeted for 2026.
Defense production grew as Ukraine’s workforce shrank by roughly a quarter since 2021.
The country that spent 2022 begging for weapons has begun exporting them, with production lines operating in Germany and ten export centers planned across Europe by end-2026. National Security and Defense Council Deputy Secretary Oleh Aloian estimated the 2026 export potential at “several billion dollars.”
Defense production grew as Ukraine’s workforce shrank by roughly a quarter since 2021—mobilization and emigration hollowed out the labor pool, and energy costs above European levels constrained output in virtually every other sector.
The outlook for 2026
By the end of 2025, real GDP stood at 79% of its 2021 level. GMK Center, a Kyiv-based metals and industry research group, put it plainly: “Achieving pre-war levels of real GDP in wartime seems an almost impossible task.”
The workforce is smaller, older, and stretched.
The energy system runs on patching and imports. The industrial base produces less of almost everything except weapons. Businesses pay more for power than their European competitors. The workforce is smaller, older, and stretched. And with water infrastructure next in Russia’s crosshairs, the season of hardship that just ended may look manageable compared to what follows.
