"Resilience plans are a PR stunt." Will Ukraine's regions be ready for the toughest winter of the war?

By the end of August, Ukrainian regions had fulfilled their resilience plans by only 47%, even though the government's target for September 1 was 80%. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has already criticized the pace. preparations for winter, the government also acknowledges the lagging behind of communities.

Local authorities explain that some of the planned works remain unfunded. A paradox arises: the central government demands rapid winter preparations yet fails to provide funding for the very measures it has approved. Frontline cities feel the impact most acutely; for instance, Kramatorskteploenerho has received no state funding in either 2025 or 2026.

LIGA.net investigated how prepared Ukrainian cities actually are for winter and whether the government's resilience plans can realistically be implemented.

What regions are doing to prepare for the upcoming winter

After the last heating season, the regions were tasked with developing resilience plans. The goal is to retain heat even after Russian blows ...in the energy sector. To this end, cities are installing backup sources for electricity and heat generation.

Currently, the total need for backup power in heat supply systems is 75.6% met—with nearly 300 MW still required—said Minister of Restoration Mykola Kalashnyk at one of the... meetingsThe Ukrainian Armed Forces have successfully repelled Russian attacks near the settlements of Bilohorivka, Verkhniokamianske, and Spirne.

However, the work is proceeding more slowly than the authorities expected. Plans were supposed to be 80% complete by September 1, yet on August 21, Prime Minister Serhiy Koretskyi reported a completion rate of only 47%. Volodymyr Zelenskyy was also dissatisfied with the pace of regional preparations.

The situation varies from city to city. A heat supplier in one city—whose head spoke with LIGA.net—already generates twice as much electricity as it consumes and aims to triple that output by winter. The company requested anonymity due to security risks.

For Lvivteploenergo, ramping up electricity generation to fully cover its own consumption remains a goal rather than a reality. However, the company is installing cogeneration units and modular boiler plants; it already has the necessary equipment on hand and plans to complete the work before the onset of winter.

Funding is the main problem of the preparatory campaign.

One of the main challenges in implementing resilience plans is securing government funding.

For instance, the city of Starokostiantyniv in the Khmelnytskyi region—with a population of 30,000—only partially received funds funding for a modular boiler plant costing UAH 9 million, says Oleksandr Dushenko, director of the local municipal utility company Teplovyk. The boiler plant is one of three components of the city's resilience plan, and the funds were supposed to arrive by the end of August.

Two other points of the resilience plan—which Dushenko describes without specifying them in detail—have already been implemented, pending only bureaucratic approvals. Once these are finalized, Starokostiantyniv will be able to operate using its own power generation during blackouts, the director of Teplovyk adds.

Ukrainian heat suppliers are unable to independently secure the funds needed to implement development programs. For the majority of them, heating tariffs for household consumers have been frozen since 2018. The law stipulates that the state must compensate these enterprises for the difference between the fixed tariff and the economically justified cost of heat supply (the so-called tariff differential); however, this is not happening.

At the same time, heat suppliers, failing to generate sufficient revenue from energy sales, are accumulating debt to the state-owned company Naftogaz. This spring, their total outstanding debt to the company exceeded UAH 100 billion. Consequently, the company has begun seeking court orders to freeze the debtors' accounts.

In total, the list includes 69 enterprises, among them Zhytomyrteploenergo. Due to the asset seizure, the company was unable to carry out repairs at five boiler houses and halted the development of four cogeneration projects, said Dmytro Rohozhyn, the company's director, at a roundtable organized by the Critical Infrastructure Association of Ukraine.

During the summer months, enterprises were able to operate with frozen accounts thanks to low operating costs. However, in the autumn, purchases of gas and electricity increase, which could ultimately make it impossible to operate backup generation.

When your accounts are frozen, you cannot buy fuel and spare parts for diesel generators., "...purchase gas from that same Naftogaz for distributed generation facilities. We could create a highly efficient backup system that would be impossible to use," says director of Mykolaivoblteploenerho Mykola Logvinov, throwing up his hands.

The thermal power plant in Kramatorsk could shut down at any moment.

The government has allocated increased financial aid to frontline regions. In these areas, local authorities are required to fund resilience plans at a level of at least 10%, whereas a 20% minimum threshold has been set for other regions. A specific level of 15% has been established for the Dnipropetrovsk region.

In August, the government allocated an additional UAH 35.2 billion for the needs of frontline regions, yet the funds often arrive with delays. In July, Dnipro Mayor Borys Filatov pointed out that out of the city’s UAH 9 billion resilience plan, the state had provided only UAH 40 million. Kateryna Kutsenko, Deputy Director for Economic Affairs at Mykolaivoblteploenergo, says her company has not received a single kopeck from the state.

All of the enterprise’s energy projects, adds company director Lohvinov, were funded through international donor assistance. If a community has a sufficient budget, it is capable of independently financing the majority of winter preparedness measures. This is, for instance, what happened in Lviv.

In this regard, the Kramatorsk heat supplier—which operates the local combined heat and power (CHP) plant—finds itself in a uniquely disadvantageous position, even compared to other cities in the Donetsk region. Kramatorskteploenergo is compelled to provide heating for a city of 52,000 residents located just eight kilometers from the front line, yet it has received no state funding for either 2025 or 2026.

Most sources of donor aid are also unavailable to the company. The reason is that 60% of Kramatorskteploenergo is privately owned, explains Director Roman Polishchuk. "Charitable organizations provide aid only to municipal enterprises," he clarifies. The company receives support primarily from the Red Cross and UNICEF.

According to data from the YouControl service, one of the two ultimate beneficial owners of Kramatorskteploenerho is Dnipro-based businessman Oleksandr Petrovskyi, who became widely known in 2019 in connection with the Orthodox Church of Ukraine receiving the Tomos.

To keep the enterprise running, Polishchuk has to resort to unconventional measures—such as selling obsolete equipment for scrap metal to fuel the repair vehicle needed to reach damaged sections of the network. The company’s accounts have also been frozen due to outstanding gas debts. The state owes the company nearly a billion hryvnias to cover the tariff differential.

For now, Kramatorskteploenergo is not receiving even state aid for the implementation of resilience plans. The government promises to provide the approved amount—UAH 117 million—in a month and a half. These funds must be spent primarily on protecting transformer substations, which could currently be disabled by an ordinary drone.

Given the experience of last year, when Kramatorsk received nothing for establishing protective measures, the director of the local heating utility does not believe in state assistance.

Do resilience plans guarantee heat in homes?

Heat suppliers are criticizing the quality of resilience plans. At a roundtable organized by the Critical Infrastructure Association, Pavlo Karas, Director of Cherkasyteplokomunenergo, stated that the plans consist of ad-hoc technical solutions based on nothing but PR.

In the case of Lviv, the resilience plan is a fully workable document, according to Oleksandr Odynets, head of the local district heating utility, who shared his views with LIGA.net. However, he acknowledged that the plan focuses too heavily on the number of facilities built while overlooking the definition of thermal energy quality standards for crisis situations.

"This creates the illusion that, even during attacks, utility companies will be able to supply heating fluid at the same temperatures as in peacetime. However, the primary goal must be to guard against worst-case scenarios—such as the freezing of internal building heating systems, as happened in Kyiv," says Odynets.

To achieve this, companies will need to ensure water circulation in both external and in-building systems at temperatures above freezing. The head of Lvivteploenergo is confident that alternative energy sources will suffice for this purpose, though it is uncertain whether they will be enough for anything more.

Small towns with a relatively extensive network of heat generation sources are better protected against the worst-case winter scenarios. According to Odynets from Lvivteploenergo, it is impossible to fully replicate the capacity of large boiler houses or combined heat and power (CHP) plants that supply heating to hundreds of thousands of consumers. In decentralized heating systems, where various boiler houses are interconnected and can back each other up, the risks for the upcoming winter are significantly lower, says Oleksandr Dushenko from Starokostiantyniv.

However, risks are possible for such systems as well.

"In the event of significant damage to the gas supply infrastructure, all installed distributed generation units and gas-fired boiler houses would cease to operate. We are also working on this scenario at the city level," explained Oleksandr Odynets of Lvivteploenergo, a company that manages approximately 190 boiler houses.