Russian strikes cut power to nearly a million Ukrainian families across four oblasts last week. Ukraine's largest private energy company, DTEK, brought it back, fully or partly restoring electricity to 596 settlements in Donetsk, Odesa, Dnipropetrovsk, and Kyiv oblasts between 31 August and 6 September, the company said.

Russia is hammering Ukraine's power grid again as the cold season nears, and the country's winter-resilience plans were less than half complete at the start of September.

Odesa and Donetsk absorb the worst

Most of the week's work was in Odesa Oblast, which Russia has been striking without pause. Ukrainian crews there returned power to more than 366,000 families, DTEK said.

Much of that damage followed a massed missile-and-drone strike on the region's main energy facilities on 2 September, after which national operator Ukrenergo imposed temporary grid limits to keep damaged equipment from overloading.

Donetsk Oblast came close behind, with power restored to nearly 360,000 homes despite what the company called an extremely difficult situation for its repair teams. In Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, crews reconnected almost 172,000 homes, and in Kyiv Oblast nearly 9,000 more.

Strikes keep cutting the grid

The reconnections are happening under continued fire. Russia keeps attacking energy sites in Odesa and Dnipropetrovsk oblasts, damaging lines faster than they can be fully secured. DTEK crews can only begin repairs once the military and emergency services have cleared access to the damaged equipment.

"Russia keeps attacking our energy system. Despite everything, we keep working and restoring power — now on the 1,657th day," said Alina Bondarenko, chief executive of DTEK Grids.

Winter sharpens the threat

The timing is the danger. Ukraine has until the heating season to shore up a grid that Russia has spent the war trying to break.

This year's attacks have again concentrated on the energy system as temperatures start to fall.