Engineers Danger Their Lives to Restore Ukraine Energy Grid

Each time Russia assaults Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, Ukrainian engineers threat their lives within the scramble to get electrical energy flowing once more. It’s a harmful job at greatest, and a deadly one at worst. It additionally requires creativity. Time stress and tools shortages make it almost not possible to rebuild issues precisely as they had been, so engineers should redesign on the fly.

These harmful, hectic situations have led to extra engineers being harm or killed. The speed of accidents amongst Ukrainian staff in electrical energy era, transmission and distribution jumped almost 50 % after Russia’s full-scale invasion started 4 years in the past, in line with information offered by Antonina Nagorna, who leads the Division of Epidemiology and Physiology of Work on the Kundiiev Institute of Occupational Well being in Kiev. By her depend no less than 48 individuals had died on the job via the top of 2025, both whereas repairing harm or in the course of the bombardment itself.

Transmission mastermind Oleksiy Brecht joined that grim depend in January. Brecht, who was director for community operations and growth on the Ukrainian grid operator Ukrenergo, died whereas coordinating work at Ukraine’s most attacked electrical switchyard, Kyivska, West of the capital. He was 47 years previous.

Brecht’s life and loss of life are a window into the realities of hundreds of Ukrainian engineers who face situations past what most engineers may think about. “The battle utterly reworked the skilled lifetime of a top-manager engineer,” says Mariia Tsaturian, an vitality analyst and chief communication officer on the suppose tank Ukraine Facility Platform, who beforehand labored with Brecht at Ukrenergo. “As for junior employees, their world was turned the other way up completely. A substation engineer working below shelling is one thing nobody had ever seen or skilled earlier than,” she says.

How Russia Assaults Ukraine’s Grid

Over the course of the battle, Russia has more and more centered on destroying Ukraine’s vitality infrastructure. It sends assault drones virtually each day in the course of the winter there, when warmth and electrical energy is required most to outlive the bitter chilly. Each 10 days or so it barrages Ukraine’s energy system with mixtures of missiles and a whole bunch of drones, repeatedly mangling tools and reducing off energy. The chilly imposed on Ukrainian houses is particularly exhausting on former prisoners of battle held in Russia, the place chilly is routinely employed as a type of torture.

Within the first two years of the battle, holding the grid flowing was a 24/7 job. However Ukrenergo has tailored to the not possible since then, says Vitaliy Zaychenko, Ukrenergo’s CEO, who in some way discovered a second to talk with Spectrum by way of video name. Now, “we’re extra ready for every assault. We’ve well-trained groups. We’ve help from Europe,” he says.

However the threat concerned with repairing the grid stays unnerving. Final month a crew from DTEK, Ukraine’s greatest private-sector vitality agency, was touring between places when it was focused by a Russian drone. They heard the drone coming and escaped earlier than their bucket truck was destroyed. Russian forces have employed ‘double faucet’ assaults in opposition to DTEK’s crews, concentrating on their energy infrastructure with a follow-up strike designed to kill first responders—a follow confirmed by the UN.

When Russia started concentrating on energy infrastructure in October 2022, Brecht’s job shifted from high-level course of grid planning and upkeep to near-constant triage and real-time system re-engineering. Most weeks, Brecht spent a number of days within the discipline, crisscrossing the nation to coordinate work at smashed substations. Brecht would usually be discovered on website determining the right way to restart energy utilizing no matter tools was obtainable. “It was a novel determination each time,” says Zaychenko.

Oleksiy Brecht died in January whereas overseeing repairs to a bombed-out substation close to Kyiv. He referred to as his staff at ukrenergo “my fighters. They referred to as him “our normal.”Ukrenergo

Zaychenko famous Brecht’s “genius” for locating inventive grid fixes, his ardour and management abilities, and his credibility with energy brokers in Ukraine and overseas. Brecht scoured the globe sourcing vital alternative elements, together with stockpiled or older tools from worldwide utilities. Transformers, which can take a yr or extra to supply, are particularly treasured.

When the precise tools wasn’t forthcoming, Brecht discovered the right way to make do. For instance, he would deploy transformers from Western Europe rated for 400 kilovolts to restart a 330-kV circuit. He would adapt transformers designed for 60-hertz alternating present for emergency use on Ukraine’s 50-Hz grid. “He would discover a method,” says Zaychenko, who labored intently with Brecht for over 20 years.

Brecht’s assistant at Ukrenergo, Svitlana Mykolayivna, says he additionally contributed to the groups’ morale and confidence. She shared on Fb that he smoked “like a locomotive” on the worst instances, and but exuded calm: “In his presence, chaos subsided,” she wrote. Brecht was not straightforward to intimidate. “He was somebody who by no means feared something or anybody,” provides Tsaturian.

Brecht’s work proved so important that Ukrenergo’s former Deputy CEO Andrii Nemyrovskyi recollects telling Ukraine’s Ministry of Protection in 2022 that the navy should shield two individuals: Zaychenko, as a result of he ran grid operations, and Brecht as a result of “system operations requires that the system exists.” Final week, President Zelenskyy posthumously named Brecht a ‘Hero of Ukraine’ for “strengthening the vitality safety of Ukraine below martial legislation.”

Ukraine’s Energy Infrastructure Below Fireplace

Brecht joined Ukrenergo in 2002 after incomes his diploma in energy engineering from Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute. Over the following 20 years, he held management positions in dispatching and grid planning and growth. He joined Ukrenergo’s administration board in June 2022 and served as its interim chief in 2024.

Brecht’s contributions to Ukraine’s wartime survival started with a number of key upgrades to Ukrenergo’s technical capabilities forward of the February 2022 invasion. He reintroduced “stay line” strategies, offering coaching and tools that allow crews to work on circuits whereas they proceed to hold energy to houses and to maintain vital wants.

Brecht additionally led preparations for Ukraine’s disconnection from the Russian grid and synchronization with Europe’s. When the invasion started, Ukraine’s Minister of Power on the time, Herman Halushchenko, had argued that switching from Russia’s grid to Europe’s was too dangerous, in line with Tsaturian and Nemyrovskyi. However Brecht insisted—accurately, as hindsight has proven—that synchronizing with Europe would offer essential stability and backup energy. At his urging, the swap was accomplished in daring vogue in the course of the first weeks of the invasion.

(Halushchenko was dismissed final yr following longstanding allegations of corruption and Russian affect in Ukraine’s vitality sector that gave method to indictments in November 2025 which have rocked President Zelenskyy’s authorities. In January, Halushchenko was detained whereas trying to go away the nation and charged with cash laundering.)

DTEK staff conduct repairs on January 26 following a Russian assault in Kyiv.Danylo Antoniuk/Cowl Pictures/AP

A Ukrainian Electrical Engineer’s Closing Day

Brecht’s remaining act of service adopted the mass destruction of January 19—a day when Kyiv’s excessive temperature was -10° C. That evening, Russian forces focused Ukraine’s vitality infrastructure with 18 ballistic missiles, a hypersonic cruise missile, 15 standard cruise missiles, and 339 drones.

The influence included catastrophic harm on the 750-kV Kyivska substation, which feeds electrical energy to the capital and ensures cooling energy for 2 nuclear energy crops.

Brecht was main a crew of about 100 individuals who had been undoing the harm when he made a lethal selection. He picked up a piece of busbar—strong conduits that join circuits inside substations. It had been blasted to the bottom and, unbeknownst to Brecht, was carrying deadly voltage. It’s unclear whether or not its circuit was nonetheless linked, or if it had picked up voltage from one other circuit.

Zaychenko says an investigation is ongoing to offer solutions. “I don’t know why he touched this busbar. Possibly due to tiredness. Possibly one thing else,” he says. “He was attempting to assist the crew to do that job shortly. It was an enormous mistake and an enormous loss for us.”