Each time Russia assaults Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, Ukrainian engineers danger their lives within the scramble to get electrical energy flowing once more. It’s a harmful job at finest, and a deadly one at worst. It additionally requires creativity. Time stress and equipment shortages make it almost inconceivable to rebuild issues precisely as they have been, so engineers should redesign on the fly.
These harmful, tense situations have led to extra engineers being harm or killed. The speed of accidents amongst Ukrainian employees in electricity generation, transmission, and distribution jumped almost 50 % after Russia’s full-scale invasion started 4 years in the past, in keeping 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 rely no less than 48 individuals had died on the job by way of the tip of 2025, both whereas repairing injury or in the course of the bombardment itself.
Transmission mastermind Oleksiy Brecht joined that grim rely in January. Brecht, who was director for community operations and improvement 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 He was 47 years outdated.
Brecht’s life and dying are a window into the realities of 1000’s of Ukrainian engineers who face situations past what most engineers may think about. “The warfare utterly remodeled 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 fully. A substation engineer working underneath 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 warfare, Russia has more and more targeted on destroying Ukraine’s vitality infrastructure. It sends assault drones nearly 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 power system with combos of missiles and a whole bunch of drones, repeatedly mangling tools and reducing off energy. The chilly imposed on Ukrainian houses is especially hard on former prisoners of war held in Russia, the place chilly is routinely employed as a type of torture.
Within the first two years of the warfare, conserving the grid flowing was a 24/7 job. However Ukrenergo has tailored to the inconceivable since then, says Vitaliy Zaychenko, Ukrenergo’s CEO, who one way or the other discovered a second to talk with IEEE Spectrum through video name. Now, “we’re extra ready for every assault. We’ve got well-trained groups. We’ve got help from Europe,” he says.
However the danger concerned in 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, focusing on their energy infrastructure with a follow-up strike designed to kill first responders—a apply confirmed by the U.N.
When Russia started focusing on energy infrastructure in October 2022, Brecht’s job shifted from high-level route of grid planning and upkeep to near-constant triage and real-time system reengineering. Most weeks, Brecht spent a number of days within the area, crisscrossing the nation to coordinate work at smashed substations. Brecht would usually be discovered on web site determining how one can restart energy utilizing no matter tools was obtainable. “It was a novel resolution 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 artistic grid fixes, his ardour and management expertise, and his credibility with energy brokers in Ukraine and overseas. Brecht scoured the globe sourcing vital substitute elements, together with stockpiled or older tools from worldwide utilities. Transformers, which can take a year or more to supply, are particularly valuable.
When the precise tools wasn’t forthcoming, Brecht found out how one can 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 means,” says Zaychenko, who labored carefully with Brecht for over 20 years.
Brecht’s assistant at Ukrenergo, Svitlana Dubas-Veremiienko, says he additionally contributed to the groups’ morale and confidence. She shared on Facebook that he smoked “like a locomotive” on the worst occasions, 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 army 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 energy security of Ukraine underneath martial legislation.”
Ukraine’s Energy Infrastructure Underneath Hearth
Brecht joined Ukrenergo in 2002 after incomes his diploma in power engineering from Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute. Over the subsequent 20 years, he held management positions in dispatching and grid planning and improvement. 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” methods, 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 keeping with Tsaturian and Nemyrovskyi. However Brecht insisted—appropriately, as hindsight has proven—that synchronizing with Europe would supply essential stability and backup energy. At his urging, the switch was completed in daring fashion in the course of the first weeks of the invasion.
(Halushchenko was dismissed final yr following longstanding allegations of corruption and Russian influence in Ukraine’s vitality sector that gave option to indictments in November 2025 which have rocked President Zelenskyy’s authorities. In January, Halushchenko was detained while attempting to leave the country and charged with money laundering.)
DTEK employees conduct repairs on 26 January following a Russian assault in Kyiv.Danylo Antoniuk/Cowl Pictures/AP
A Ukrainian Electrical Engineer’s Last 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 typical cruise missiles, and 339 drones.
The impression included catastrophic injury on the 750-kV Kyivska substation, which feeds electrical energy to the capital and ensures cooling energy for 2 nuclear power crops.
Brecht was main a crew of about 100 individuals who have been undoing the injury when he made a lethal alternative. 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 related, or if it had picked up voltage from another circuit.
Zaychenko says an investigation is ongoing to supply solutions. “I don’t know why he touched this busbar. Perhaps due to tiredness. Perhaps one thing else,” he says. “He was making an attempt to assist the crew to do that job rapidly. It was an enormous mistake and an enormous loss for us.”
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