As Russia struggles to make advances on the ground in eastern Ukraine, it is pouring more resources into the war in the air.
Analysts say Russian missile and drone attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure have intensified earlier this year than usual, with the Kremlin expanding its targets to further damage Ukraine’s economy.
An independent United Nations commission of inquiry concluded last week that Russia committed war crimes and crimes against humanity by deliberately attacking civilian infrastructure, particularly critical energy systems during the deep winter of 2025-2026.
Experts say attacks are expected to get worse this winter. With the United States set to broker new peace talks next week, Russian President Vladimir Putin has escalated his attacks on Ukraine.
John Ruff, head of international partnerships at the Center for a New Eurasian Strategy, a London-based think tank, said the Russian air campaign was now “clearly aimed at destroying the Ukrainian economy.” Ruff also told CNN that he believes many of Kyiv’s European allies do not understand “how serious this situation that is unfolding in Ukraine is” and how much of an economic burden it could place on its European partners.
“President Putin has concluded that he cannot win in Donbass even if he throws more soldiers into the fight and tries to move forward, because the Ukrainians are actually having a relatively successful summer,” Ruff said.
“(Putin) has concluded that the only way to get out of this situation is to actually destroy the economy, and they are doing that in a systematic way.”
“We’re going to see a much worse humanitarian situation this winter, much earlier than last year,” said Christian Vlas, an Eastern Europe researcher at global conflict monitoring group ACLED.
“It’s not going to be a normal winter,” he told CNN.
Ukraine’s civilian death toll is the highest since the first months of the war, with Russian airstrikes killing more than 2,700 Ukrainian civilians by 2026, according to data compiled by ACLED.
The number of attacks on Ukraine by Russia steadily increased in 2026. In January 2026, Russia’s attacks on Ukraine reached 3,650. In October, that number rose to 5,532.
Ukraine’s attacks on Russian soil are also on the rise, with 2,302 attacks carried out in October. Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said last month that it had attacked at least seven Russian companies involved in weapons production, three military airfields, and key radar and military communications facilities. This summer, Ukraine also launched an attack on the warehouses of Wildberry, Russia’s largest online retailer.
Russian attacks on Ukraine’s Black Sea exports, Danube ports, industrial warehouses, railway infrastructure, and steel industry are now frequent.
Although parts of its infrastructure serve both civilian and military purposes, experts said recent attacks brazenly targeted only civilians.
On Monday, Russia bombed a school building used as a shelter and relief center in Zaporizhzhia, killing at least 55 Ukrainians. This was one of the deadliest incidents in the fifth year of the conflict. Ukrainian authorities said the site was attacked again by drones on Sunday as emergency rescue teams searched for people trapped under rubble.
Moscow has consistently denied targeting civilians.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s main steel factories in Kryvyi Rii and Zaporozhye were hit by ballistic missile attacks between August and October, forcing them to shut down operations. The city of Krivi Rif has warned of the “severe socio-economic impact” of the steelworks closure and the loss of income for thousands of families.
“These are hits to the tax base of Ukraine, and we don’t just know ‘industry’ in a very abstract way,” Vlas said. “It takes a toll on people’s paychecks.”
Vlas noted that, along with Russia’s attacks on other key sectors such as agriculture and grain exports, this appears to be an effort by the Russian government to cause multiple economic conflagrations throughout Ukraine’s economy at the same time.
“They’re targeting shopping malls, warehouses, warehouses, things like that. That means disrupting the flow of goods, the sale of goods, etc.,” said Katerina Stepanenko, Russia team leader at the Institute for War Research, a Washington think tank that closely monitors the conflict.
And while Russia used to carry out attacks primarily at night, Stepanenko said there has also been an increase in daytime attacks aimed, in part, at upending daily business operations in Ukraine.
“What this does is it sets off an air alert that many Ukrainian government buildings and businesses will no longer be able to legally operate and operations will be disrupted,” she told CNN.
Strikes on energy infrastructure also disrupt economic activity, given that power outages and water outages severely impact businesses.
Stepanenko said Russian forces have also begun attacking energy infrastructure in previously untargeted regions of Ukraine, such as the western city of Rivne, creating new challenges for Ukraine’s weak air defenses.
The impact of energy attacks is increasing. Many of Ukraine’s power plants are damaged beyond repair.
“We have to keep in mind the cumulative impact of this war and the enormous fatigue on the Ukrainian side,” Ruff said. “This is really a very dangerous moment because the economic structure is under such strain.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Russia attacked the power grid in the Dnipropetrovsk region starting Sunday and overnight, leaving more than 600,000 people without power. He also said there were widespread power outages in other regions, including Kharkiv and Zhytomyr.
Local authorities in Kiev said as of Saturday, about 40% of buildings were without heating. Meanwhile, this weekend, as the first snow of the year began to fall in Ukraine, Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andriy Sibikha issued an even harsher warning.
“Moscow is deliberately leaving millions of Ukrainians without electricity, heating and running water as winter approaches,” Sibiha said. “Russia is trying to accomplish in the cold and darkness what it cannot accomplish on the battlefield.”
The increase in civilian casualties comes as Russia expands its use of jet-powered Shahid drones and loitering munitions, weapons that are difficult for Ukrainian forces to shoot down. Ukraine is working to improve its interception capabilities against both countries, but experts say Russian weapons currently have the upper hand.
Ukraine is also grappling with a chronic shortage of U.S.-made Patriot interceptor missiles, one of the few defensive weapons capable of shooting down Russian ballistic missiles.
As a result, “civilian deaths and casualties have been increasing almost continuously since April. But the spike in deaths in early October is truly staggering,” ACLED’s Vlas told CNN.
Civilians are also paying a high price.
A new report from the International Rescue Committee (IRC) finds that economic hardship in Ukraine’s southern and eastern regions is forcing civilians to abandon their homes or take serious risks to continue earning money. For example, IRC research has found that in some regions, farmers risk their lives working on mine-contaminated land just to secure some source of income.
Of the hundreds of households surveyed in the Mykolaiv region, 91% said they were in urgent need of financial support. In Dnipropetrovsk, 42% cited financial aid as an urgent need.
“The lack of financial resources is not just about paying bills; there is real pressure to make life-changing decisions,” said Olga Kasyuva, IRC’s Deputy Director of Field Management in Ukraine.
And for many civilians in eastern Ukraine, the conflict began disrupting their lives and livelihoods starting in 2014, meaning they have been suffering from economic pressure for more than a decade, she noted.
Kashba, who is based in Kyiv, has herself witnessed growing economic instability and a loss of income for her neighbors. Her local farmers market closed after it was destroyed in the Russian strike. She told CNN that a separate attack recently hit a nearby warehouse, damaging inventory at several small bookstores.
“When a grocery store burns down, when a warehouse burns down…yes, the product is affected,” Kashba said. “But it’s also a source of income for many people, thousands of people.”
CNN’s Becky Pinnington, Kosta Gaku and Victoria Butenko contributed to this report.
