Russia Presses Winter Campaign Against Ukraine's Power Grid as Its Own Losses Hit Record High

Russia is intensifying a campaign to cripple Ukraine's energy infrastructure ahead of winter, even as Moscow's forces absorb their heaviest casualties of the year and give up ground in a key sector of the eastern front, according to Ukrainian officials and military assessments.

Ukraine's military general staff reported that Russian killed and wounded totaled 46,230 in September, the highest monthly figure of 2026. The toll follows roughly 40,000 casualties per month since June and approaches the benchmark of 50,000 monthly Russian losses that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy set as a war aim in January. According to British defense officials cited in the reporting, Russia lost 2,090 troops in a single day on September 28 — the highest 24-hour casualty count of the entire war. Neither side's casualty claims can be independently verified by Al Jazeera.

Ukraine attributes the bulk of Russian losses to first-person-view drones, saying it possesses video evidence of more than 90 percent of the casualties inflicted. The heaviest fighting has occurred where Russia is attempting to capture the remaining portions of the eastern Luhansk and Donetsk regions still under Ukrainian control.

In the Lyman area, Ukraine's Third Army Corps has inflicted significant losses while conducting the third phase of a counteroffensive known as Operation Vivaldi. The operation has recaptured roughly 176 square kilometers (68 square miles) of territory in recent weeks, according to the corps' own account. Its commander, Brigadier General Andriy Biletsky, said the success came from a deception plan: Ukrainian forces feigned an attack from the west, inducing Russia to exhaust its reserves in counterattacks in that direction, before striking from the north. Among the tactics employed were remotely controlled Russian armored personnel carriers packed with explosives and driven into Russian defensive positions. A Ukrainian commander on the Lyman front said the operation's first phase wiped out a Russian vanguard, while Ukrainian drone operators have disrupted ammunition and fuel supplies to starve frontline units.

Russia's defense ministry has rejected claims of Ukrainian gains, publishing video it presented as evidence of its own positions. However, independent tracking groups that use open-source, geolocated footage — the Institute for the Study of War and DeepState — rarely corroborate Russian territorial claims on their maps. The ISW has assessed Russia's net territorial gain this year at just 148 square kilometers (57 square miles), far short of the 5,300 square kilometers Moscow claims.

Despite its battlefield setbacks, Russia has continued to pound Ukrainian cities. Strikes over the past week hit energy infrastructure along with residential buildings, kindergartens, schools and office buildings. On September 28, a drone destroyed part of the National Academy of Sciences in Kyiv, killing several people. Two days later, Russian drones struck a thermal power plant in the Kyiv region, causing power outages; at least five people were killed across the country that day.

Prime Minister Sergii Koretskyi said on social media that while Russia has attacked energy infrastructure every day since the summer, the late-September assault was the most massive combined attack since the end of the last heating season. Zelenskyy has warned for weeks that Moscow intends to hammer the energy sector to inflict suffering on civilians during the winter.

Ukraine's defense ministry electronics adviser, Serhii Beskrestnov, said Russia on September 30 tested a drone equipped with a cumulative cutting warhead designed specifically to sever high-voltage pylons. He said the apparent objective is to attack critical high-voltage power lines. Russia also targeted data centers during September, in what Ukrainian officials describe as an effort to disrupt internet connectivity and digital commerce.

Ukraine's air defenses remain stretched by a shortage of interceptors capable of stopping ballistic missiles, and Zelenskyy said several missiles got through on September 30. Kyiv believes it could manufacture interceptors faster and more cheaply than its allies if the technology were shared. Zelenskyy had persuaded US President Donald Trump at last July's NATO summit to allow licensed production of Patriot-system interceptors in Ukraine, but Trump later withdrew the offer.

Jet-powered drones present a newer and growing challenge. Ukraine had become highly effective at downing propeller-driven drones, eliminating well over 90 percent of them. But during the week ending October 1, Ukrainian forces intercepted only 81 percent of the 1,933 long-range aerial drones Russia launched, a decline attributed to the prevalence of jet-powered models. Zelenskyy said the interception rate for jet-powered Shahed drones now stands at 55 percent.

Beskrestnov further warned that Russia is developing a system of radio beacons to improve drone guidance — a capability that could sharpen the accuracy of future strikes. The combination of a deteriorating interception rate and new guidance technology suggests Ukraine's cities and power grid may face an even more difficult winter, even as Moscow's ground forces continue to pay a steep price for marginal territorial gains.