Russia sees power outages rise by third as Ukraine scales up infrastructure airstrikes

Russia has experienced an average of 34% more monthly power outages and electrical grid failures so far in 2025 than it did during the entirety of 2024, data collected by Novaya Gazeta Europe has shown.

From January to October 2025, 4,198 power outages were reported in Russia, a 12% increase on the 3,749 recorded during the whole of 2024, most of which were isolated cases. With two months still unaccounted for, the final figure for 2025 is still likely to rise significantly.

The leading cause of power outages, accounting for over 40% of cases, remains unspecified infrastructure damage with no official cause. Scheduled maintenance is responsible for 17%, while blackouts caused by extreme weather — both summer heat and winter cold — account for 15% of cases.

As Ukraine considerably scaled up attacks on Russian infrastructure targets in 2025, the share of drone-related power outages rose from 9% to 11%. A total of 467 drone-related power outages were reported by October, marking a 37% increase on the figures from 2024, though that number is bound to rise further by the end of the year.

The Ukraine-adjacent Belgorod region in western Russia saw the sharpest rise in drone-related power outages this year, jumping from 16 cases in August to 51 in October.

Power outages, which were often linked to infrastructure failures, peaked during the month of July in both 2024 and 2025. In cases in which a cause was specified, extreme heat was the most common explanation given. Russia’s southern Krasnodar region has experienced the most power outages in 2025 so far, with 71 reports of heat-related outages, followed by Dagestan in the North Caucasus; the Rostov and Volgograd regions in southern Russia, and the Kaluga region in western Russia.