Ukrainian energy CEO warns only Trump can stop Russian strikes on power grid

Russia’s attacks on Ukraine’s power grid will continue without President Trump intervening, Ukraine’s top energy executive warned, as millions risk a freezing winter without electricity.

DTEK’s Maxim Timchenko spoke at a time when Ukraine is preparing for more drone and missile attacks on Russia’s energy infrastructure and the day after Trump met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for the third time to try to end the nearly four-year war.

“Yesterday’s meeting gave us new hope. But our task is not to live from hope to hope; it is to continue doing what we have been doing for four years: responding to urgent challenges and fighting every day,” Timchenko told Fox News Digital.

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“We are deeply grateful to President Trump for his leadership. We believe that he and his team, together with the support of our partners in the European Union and other countries, are the only ones who can force Russia to negotiate and stop the war,” DTEK CEO said. he said.

Founded by Ukrainian entrepreneur Rinat Akhmetov, DTEK is Ukraine’s largest private energy company and the backbone of the country’s energy supply.

Before Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, the company operated eight thermal power plants. Three of them were later occupied by Russian forces.

“Today we operate five power plants, and each of them has been attacked at least five times since the large-scale occupation,” Timchenko said. he said.

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A salesman waits for customers in a store during a partial power outage in Lviv, November 28, 2024, following a Russian attack on Ukrainian energy infrastructure during the Russian invasion of Ukraine. (Yuriy Dyachyshyn/AFP via Getty Images)

He said the damage was unprecedented. “The level of destruction is incomparable to any energy system in the world. Nothing like this has happened in modern history,” he said.

At one point, nearly all of DTEK’s production capacity was damaged or destroyed, resulting in losses totaling hundreds of millions of dollars, he said.

“And at one point I would say 90% of our production capacity was damaged or destroyed,” he explained.

“We’ve lost hundreds of millions of dollars in direct losses with this destruction, not to mention lost revenue. So our recovery budget for 2025 alone was about $220 million, but if you take that from the beginning of the full-scale invasion, I would say it’s hundreds, hundreds of millions of dollars,” Timchenko said.

Despite the devastation and losses encountered, his company has repeatedly restored power to millions of Ukrainians.

“We have managed to reconnect more than 30 million households and customers since 2022,” Timchenko said. “We fight and we are fast.”

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A drone crashed into an apartment building in Kiev during Russia’s attack on Ukraine on Saturday, December 27, 2025. (Gleb Garanich/Reuters)

“The situation has been extremely difficult for the last two years. The attacks have become so intense that we live in crisis mode every day because our equipment is being destroyed, power plants are damaged and the only thing we think about is how to restore the electricity supply as quickly as possible,” Timchenko said. he said.

He added that recovery efforts also include resuming gas drilling, continuing construction of Eastern Europe’s largest wind park and building a large battery storage system with US firm Fluence.

Otherwise, for example, in Odessa, approximately 600,000 people were affected by the power outage, while some neighborhoods remained without electricity for days.

But Russia’s last large-scale attack came on December 26, when missiles and drones struck Kiev and surrounding areas, knocking out power to more than 1 million people in freezing temperatures.

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DTEK said they have restored electricity to 30 million Ukrainian households despite Russia’s repeated attacks on critical energy infrastructure. (Reuters)

“People learned how to live without necessities like electricity,” Timchenko said.

“The temperature in Kiev was minus 10 degrees and due to this attack we could not reach water, we could not get warm and of course there was no electricity.

“They attacked us with ballistic and Kalibr missiles and calibers, then 500 drones and other types of missiles,” he added.

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Going forward, Timchenko emphasized that Ukraine is dependent on continued support.

“The energy system is at the center of this struggle. Modern life cannot exist without electricity. We need continued global support,” he added.