Russia’s missile and drone strikes on Ukraine’s energy grid have reignited debate over what international law permits during war as Ukrainians face winter conditions, including temperatures around minus 20 C in Kyiv this week. Ukraine’s government has accused Russia of targeting power infrastructure to deny civilians critical services such as light, heating and running water, while Russia has defended the attacks as part of its military campaign.
In remarks made on the eve of a new round of talks aimed at ending the war, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that “Taking advantage of the coldest days of winter to terrorize people is more important to Russia than diplomacy.” Zelenskyy’s statement framed the energy strikes as an attempt to pressure civilians as winter deepens, rather than as purely military action with limited spillover to the public.
International legal experts and humanitarian organizations described the governing rules as centered on both the military relevance of targets and the proportionality of expected harm to civilians. David Crane, a former chief prosecutor at the United Nations Special Court for Sierra Leone, said combatants can lawfully target a power grid if the attack “directly affects a valid military target,” while warning that the rules also prohibit attacks that cause excessive civilian casualties. He added that, in the case of Russia’s attacks on Ukraine, “the indiscriminate and widespread targeting does not come close to what is legal.”
Crane’s view was paired with the International Committee of the Red Cross description of how energy systems are treated under the laws of war. The ICRC said parts of energy systems that provide essential services to civilians “are in principle civilian objects,” and it said such facilities are protected against direct attack and reprisals as well as against incidental harm. The legal question, in that framing, is how attackers distinguish military objectives from civilian-providing infrastructure and how they account for the foreseeable effects of damage.
That tension has also connected to the International Criminal Court’s involvement in the conflict. The ICC’s pretrial judges issued arrest warrants in 2024 for top Russian military officials, including former defense minister Sergei Shoigu and Russia’s chief military officer, Gen. Valery Gerasimov, describing “reasonable grounds to believe” that alleged strikes were directed against civilian objects. The court said that for installations that may have qualified as military objectives at the relevant time, the expected incidental civilian harm and damage would have been clearly excessive to the anticipated military advantage.
Russia is not a member of the ICC and rejects its jurisdiction, according to the AP reporting. Russia has also refused to extradite suspects to face justice in the ICC’s courtrooms in The Hague, Netherlands.
Moscow’s position has been that it targets energy facilities and other infrastructure that support Ukrainian military industries and armed forces. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov insisted Wednesday that “our military is striking the targets that they believe are associated with the military complex of the Kyiv regime, the operation is continuing.” He also said Russia denies targeting residential areas despite evidence presented by Ukraine and others.
Ukraine, for its part, has accused Russia of seeking to grind down Ukrainian resistance by imposing worsening hardship on civilians. Ukrainian authorities have said Russia tried to cripple electricity by targeting substations, transformers, turbines and generators at power plants. Ukraine’s largest private power company, DTEK, said this week’s overnight attack was the ninth major assault on its thermal power plants since October.
The legal debate is unfolding against a broader accounting of damage in Ukraine’s energy sector. A joint estimate by the World Bank, the European Commission and the United Nations said Ukraine’s energy sector has suffered more than $20 billion in direct war damage.