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 practically not possible to rebuild issues precisely as they have been, so engineers should redesign on the fly.
These harmful, tense circumstances have led to extra engineers being harm or killed. The speed of accidents amongst Ukrainian staff in electricity generation, transmission and distribution jumped practically 50 p.c after Russia’s full-scale invasion started 4 years in the past, based on information supplied 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 at the least 48 individuals had died on the job by the tip of 2025, both whereas repairing injury or throughout 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 previous.
Brecht’s life and loss of life are a window into the realities of hundreds of Ukrainian engineers who face circumstances past what most engineers may think about. “The struggle fully 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 workers, their world was turned the other way up completely. A substation engineer working below 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 struggle, Russia has more and more centered on destroying Ukraine’s vitality infrastructure. It sends assault drones virtually day by day throughout 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 lot of drones, repeatedly mangling gear and slicing off energy. The chilly imposed on Ukrainian properties 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 struggle, maintaining the grid flowing was a 24/7 job. However Ukrenergo has tailored to the not possible since then, says Vitaliy Zaychenko, Ukrenergo’s CEO, who one way or the other discovered a second to talk with Spectrum through video name. Now, “we’re extra ready for every assault. We’ve well-trained groups. We’ve assist from Europe,” he says.
However the danger concerned with 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 towards DTEK’s crews, concentrating on their energy infrastructure with a follow-up strike designed to kill first responders—a follow confirmed by the UN.
When Russia started concentrating on energy infrastructure in October 2022, Brecht’s job shifted from high-level course of grid planning and upkeep to near-constant triage and real-time system re-engineering. Most weeks, Brecht spent a number of days within the subject, crisscrossing the nation to coordinate work at smashed substations. Brecht would usually be discovered on website determining easy methods to restart energy utilizing no matter gear was out there. “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 known as his workers at ukrenergo “my fighters. They known as him “our common.”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 essential alternative elements, together with stockpiled or older gear from worldwide utilities. Transformers, which can take a year or more to supply, are particularly treasured.
When the correct gear wasn’t forthcoming, Brecht discovered easy methods to 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 Mykolayivna, says he additionally contributed to the groups’ morale and confidence. She shared on Facebook that he smoked “like a locomotive” on the worst instances, and but exuded calm: “In his presence, chaos subsided,” she wrote. Brecht was not simple 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 navy should defend 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 below martial regulation.”
Ukraine’s Energy Infrastructure Below Fireplace
Brecht joined Ukrenergo in 2002 after incomes his diploma in power engineering from 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 “reside line” methods, offering coaching and gear that allow crews to work on circuits whereas they proceed to hold energy to properties and to maintain essential 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, based on Tsaturian and Nemyrovskyi. However Brecht insisted—accurately, as hindsight has proven—that synchronizing with Europe would offer essential stability and backup energy. At his urging, the switch was completed in daring fashion throughout the first weeks of the invasion.
(Halushchenko was dismissed final 12 months following longstanding allegations of corruption and Russian influence in Ukraine’s vitality sector that gave approach 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 staff conduct repairs on January 26 following a Russian assault in Kyiv.Danylo Antoniuk/Cowl Photos/AP
A Ukrainian Electrical Engineer’s Ultimate Day
Brecht’s closing 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 vegetation.
Brecht was main a group of about 100 individuals who have been undoing the injury when he made a lethal selection. He picked up a bit of busbar—stable 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. Possibly due to tiredness. Possibly one thing else,” he says. “He was making an attempt to assist the group to do that job rapidly. It was an enormous mistake and an enormous loss for us.”
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