The blackboard hanging behind the bar at Squat 17b, a venue in kyiv, does not list drink offerings, but instead keeps a countdown of the days Ukrainians must endure the harsh winter. Inside, the bar lacks electricity and is illuminated only by candles, while customers shiver on stools drinking beer cooled by the freezing temperatures themselves. This print, described by Financial Timesis the result of an exceptionally harsh winter, with temperatures reaching -20 degrees Celsius.
What is emerging in Eastern Europe is a reality that some analysts They already describe how “thermal terror”: the cold turned into a weapon of war. Russia does not merely seek to degrade Ukrainian military capabilities; It deliberately targets substations, power plants and distribution networks to make everyday life physically unfeasible. Heating, electricity and water become strategic objectives. Away from the trenches, the front line has moved to the transformers and electrical substations.
In the first weeks of the year, Russian forces They have attacked the Ukrainian energy sector more than 200 times. Russia has launched coordinated waves of up to 40 missiles and 400 drones in a single night, seeking to overwhelm air defense systems. Ukraine lost up to two-thirds of its electricity generation capacity after the first months of bombing. And yet, the infrastructure resists.
The new frontier of sabotage
Faced with the increase in physical and hybrid threats, the European electricity industry has begun to issue clear warnings. “The last year has shown us that continuing with the current model in Europe is no longer an option,” said Leonhard Birnbaum, president of Eurelectric, in statements collected by Euronews. For the sector, security of electricity supply It has become a strategic issue.
At the end of December, Poland’s security systems they detected what his Government described as “the strongest attack against Polish energy infrastructure in years.” The Sandworm group—a unit linked to the Russian GRU—managed to disable remote terminal units (RTUs) at at least 30 energy facilities. These RTUs do not generate electricity, but they allow substations and plants to be monitored and controlled. The attack affected plants cogeneration and systems that connect wind and solar farms with the grid.
To achieve this, they used a destructive malicious code known as wiperdesigned exclusively to delete files and permanently render computers unusable. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk warned thathad it been completely successful, half a million people would have been left without heat in the middle of winter. This use of a wiper marks a qualitative leap: Russia has gone from simple digital espionage to destructive sabotage against critical infrastructure of a NATO member country.
Physical espionage is added to the cyber threat under the sea. The Russian spy ship Yantaroperated by the Russian Deep Sea Research Directorate (GUGI), traveled for almost 100 days through the waters of the Atlantic and the Mediterranean. Their goal was to map and monitor the undersea cables that Europe and North America depend on for their digital communications and energy. These types of covert operations in the “gray zone” seek to measure NATO’s red lines and open the door to possible power or communications outages to force political negotiations.
How did we get here?
As the historic American general Omar Bradley recalled: “Amateurs talk tactics, professionals talk logistics.” For any developed nation today, the most critical logistics system is its energy infrastructure.
For decades, Europe built a deeply dependent on imported fossil fuels. Dependency became vulnerability. As he remembered Bloombergthe European Union paid almost €22 billion in Russian fossil fuel imports last year, more than it provided in direct financial support to Ukraine.
Changing models has ceased to be a climate issue and has become a pure survival instinct. The old continent has proven that filling its territory with renewable sources and electrifying the economy builds a much more solid structural wall than the old addiction to foreign fossils. And the shield is already working. A look at the data collected by the think tank Agora Energiewende In his latest report, Europe’s energy security on the path to climate neutrality, reveals a brutal cushion: the simple deployment of wind and solar technology during the last five years (2019-2024) avoided having to buy and burn 92 billion cubic meters of gas.
However, this transformation introduces new risks. Modern power grids are more digital, more interconnected and more decentralized. According to the same report Agora Energiewendethe challenge is no longer just to ensure fuel supply, but to guarantee network stability, cybersecurity and industrial resilience. More nodes mean more potential entry points for attacks. Added to this is the technological dimension. How to collect Euronewsbetween 70% and 80% of the solar inverters installed in Europe come from Chinese manufacturers such as Huawei or Sungrow. In a highly digitalized system, hardware control also potentially implies software control.
Energy as defense policy
Faced with this vulnerability, Europe is obliged to treat energy security as a defense policy de facto. A coalition of defense experts, including retired military leaders such as British Lieutenant General Richard Nugee and Dutch General Tom Middendorp, has urged European governments to count low-carbon energy spending against NATO’s target of allocating 1.5% of GDP to critical infrastructure and civil resilience.
In statements collected by Guardianretired Lt. Gen. Richard Nugee said, “To have a strong military deterrent we need a resilient homeland. And low-carbon energy is a critical component.” According to Bloombergthis vision is gaining ground in the European strategic debate: the energy transition is no longer just climate policy; is security architecture.
The tactical key to this new defense is decentralization. Unlike large centralized plants that are easy targets for missiles, wind turbines and solar panels are much more geographically dispersed, making them significantly less vulnerable to large-scale attacks. To sustain this new model, Euroelectric proposes three fundamental pillars:
- Better planning: Preparedness frameworks should span the entire value chain, include all energy carriers, and anticipate long-term external threats.
- Massive flexibility: It will be essential to deploy new storage and demand management technologies to complement the variability of renewable energies.
- Efficient markets: Price signals should allow consumers to contribute to security of supply by actively adjusting their consumption.
The fear of a collapse has already made waves in European offices. The first big move was sealed in Hamburgwhere nine governments have just signed an unprecedented pact to shield the North Sea. Not only are they going to build wind farms with a capacity of 100 gigawatts, but they will share the physical and cyber surveillance of all that infrastructure. And defense will not remain on the surface: NATO strategists have the project on the table Atlantic Bastion. Their idea is to seed the ocean floor—on the route between Greenland, Iceland and the United Kingdom—with microphones, sensors and underwater drones so that no one can get close to the strategic cables without setting off alarms.
The new bottlenecks
The transition does not eliminate all vulnerabilities. Some experts cited by Euroactiv They warn that replacing Russian gas with American liquefied natural gas could be equivalent to changing one dependence for another. Signing long-term contracts can lead to stranded assets in a market where gas demand is set to structurally fall.
Furthermore, dependence on critical components manufactured outside Europe raises strategic questions. The report of Agora Energiewende highlights the need to prioritize the production and recycling of key materials, as well as establishing specific safety criteria for power electronics and control software.
The idea does not come only from the industrial or climate field. In one opinion column of Financial Times titled Europe should treat energy security as defense policyformer NATO deputy supreme allied commander in Europe Richard Shirreff argued that energy security should be treated as de facto defense policy. Recalling that “professionals talk about logistics,” Shirreff warned that energy infrastructure is today the most critical logistics system of any developed nation. “Energy is no longer just a commodity for economic prosperity; it is the first line of defense,” he wrote.
For the former Allied command, the Ukrainian lesson is clear: if an adversary can shut down an economy, it can weaken its combat capability before conventional operations even begin.
Without energy there is no defense
Europe’s energy vulnerability has never really been due to a lack of fuel, but rather dependency. In the face of cyber attacks and physical sabotage, energy has ceased to be solely a pillar for economic prosperity and has become consolidated as the first line of the combat front.
The message from military and industry strategists is unanimous: to have a strong military deterrent, the continent needs to build a resilient civilian rearguard. In the era of hybrid warfare, if Europe cannot light its cities and keep its economies functioning, it will be completely unable to defend its borders.
Xataka | Sandworm crosses the border: GRU unit attacks Polish renewables and challenges NATO
GIPHY App Key not set. Please check settings