When Darkness Becomes a Matter of Rights: Why Attacks on Energy Infrastructure Are Attacks on Human Dignity

July 15, 2026.

    An opinion piece for Chynnist Zakonu
    War has changed even familiar words. Electricity is no longer merely a utility. Heat is no longer just a figure on a bill. Water from the tap is no longer simply a matter of municipal services.
    In a country systematically attacked by Russian missiles and drones, electricity means that a doctor can perform surgery; that a person with a disability can use an elevator; that parents can heat food for a child; that an older person is not left alone in a cold apartment without communication. Electricity keeps pumping stations, transport, pharmacies, warning systems, banks, mobile networks, and shelters running. Its absence very quickly ceases to be an everyday inconvenience and becomes a threat to life.
    That is why the new report by the UN Human Rights Office on the situation in Ukraine should not be read merely as another document about war. It is a document about how the destruction of infrastructure turns into violations of the fundamental rights of millions of people.
    According to the UN, between December 2025 and May 2026, 1,272 civilians were killed and another 6,871 injured. This is 40% higher than during the same period a year earlier. Long-range missiles and drones remained the leading cause of civilian deaths and injuries. The UN Human Rights Office also documented at least 423 attacks on electricity generation, transmission, and distribution facilities, as well as at least 74 strikes on combined heat and power plants and other heating infrastructure between October 2025 and March 2026.
    Behind every such figure lies not an abstract “critical infrastructure facility.” Behind it is a person unable to charge a phone, call an ambulance, obtain medication, keep warm, cook food, or reach their own home.
    The right to life does not end when emergency schedules begin
    In human rights discussions, the right to life is often associated with direct threats: shelling, injury, or death. That is correct, but insufficient.
    In wartime, the right to life has a broader dimension. It includes a person’s safety in hospital, access to water, heating and medical care, the ability to receive danger warnings, evacuate, and stay in touch with relatives. When an attack cuts electricity — followed by water, heating, communication, and access to medicine — the danger to life may not always look like an explosion. Yet it is real.
    Those most at risk are people who already require additional support: older persons, persons with disabilities, patients dependent on electrically powered medical equipment, families with young children, internally displaced persons, and residents of frontline and remote communities.
    For some, a power outage means inconvenience. For others, it means being unable to use an oxygen concentrator. For others, it means an elevator stopping on the twelfth floor. For others still, it means cold in an apartment where an infant lives. Or no water for someone unable to carry it independently.
    The UN explicitly notes that the loss of electricity and heating in winter affected people’s health, safety, and ability to maintain an adequate standard of living. Older people, persons with disabilities, and families with children were particularly affected. The UN report also warns that people may face the same challenges next winter — and even greater ones if attacks resume.
    This wording matters. It means that the humanitarian cost of an attack on energy infrastructure is not limited to the moment of impact. It continues for hours, days, and weeks afterwards.
    Heat, water, and dignity are not privileges of peacetime
    In public discussions about war, we often hear: “We must endure.” At times, this may indeed be the only possible response to extraordinary circumstances. Ukrainians have proved that they can withstand incredibly difficult conditions.
    But endurance does not mean surrendering the right to dignified living conditions.
    A person does not lose the right to water, heating, medical care, accessibility, or respect simply because the country is at war. Nor can the state relinquish its duty to protect people merely because the aggressor continues to strike. Ukraine clearly cannot eliminate all consequences of Russian aggression. But it is obliged to do everything reasonably possible: protect critical infrastructure, restore it, ensure backup solutions, inform people, support vulnerable groups, and prevent discrimination in access to assistance.
    A human rights-based approach to energy resilience begins with a simple question: what happens to a person when the system fails?
    Do they know where to turn?
    Do they have access to warmth and water?
    Is the nearest assistance point physically accessible to a wheelchair user?
    Can they charge a communication device?
    Does the hospital have backup power?
    Does the community know which residents depend on electrically powered medical equipment?
    Can an older person living alone receive help without navigating complex bureaucracy?
    These are not secondary questions. They are the substance of human rights during an energy crisis.
    Russian strikes on energy infrastructure are a strategy of pressure on civilians
    Systematic attacks on energy and heating infrastructure have an obvious civilian dimension. They strike not only equipment. They strike society’s ability to live an ordinary life.
    When schools lose power, a child loses more than a lesson. They lose stability, contact with peers, and a familiar daily rhythm. When hospitals or water utilities cannot operate, this is not simply an “accident.” It restricts access to healthcare and the basic conditions of human existence. When people cannot keep their homes warm during freezing weather, the issue is safety, health, and human dignity.
    This is felt especially painfully in communities that have already endured occupation, destruction, or large-scale displacement. For them, every new attack can reopen trauma that seemed to belong to the past.
    Ukraine must not become accustomed to the idea that a cold apartment, lack of water, or weeks without reliable communication are a “new normal.” Adaptation is necessary. But normalising the unacceptable is not.
    This is where the line lies between resilience and indifference. Resilience means that society learns to act during a crisis without losing its humanity. Indifference means responding to hardship with the phrase: “Everyone is enduring it.”
    Recovery must be fair
    After an attack, the first question is usually technical: how long will repairs take? This is important. But another question is equally vital: who will be restored first, who will have access to backup power, who will receive water, heating, and information — and who will remain on the margins of attention?
    Infrastructure recovery is always also a matter of fairness.
    A community cannot measure the success of repairs only by whether lights have returned in the central part of a city. It must see remote villages, temporary accommodation for internally displaced persons, buildings where older people live, hospitals, residential institutions, shelters, and social service facilities.
    The human rights criterion is simple: those who are most vulnerable must not wait the longest merely because they are fewer in number, less visible, or lack the resources to demand attention.
    That is why communities should already have not only technical but also social risk maps. Where do people who need regular medical care live? Which buildings critically depend on pumping equipment? Where is access to support points limited? Which villages lack backup transport? Which institutions require autonomous power first?
    Such a map is not extra bureaucracy. It is a way to ensure that no person is lost within the system.
    Information during a crisis is also a right
    During outages, people often experience not only cold or inconvenience. They experience uncertainty.
    When there is no information, rumours spread faster than official messages. Someone writes that an outage will last three days; someone else claims that a city has been “cut off permanently”; others circulate false reports about water, evacuation, or hospital operations. In wartime, such uncertainty can be no less destructive than physical damage.
    Authorities at every level must explain not only what has happened, but what people should do. It is not enough to write: “Emergency repairs are underway.” People need to know where to get water, which pharmacies are operating, where they can charge devices, whether transport routes have changed, how hospitals are functioning, and where persons in need can seek help.
    Information must be accessible: written in clear language, free of bureaucratic formulas, communicated through different channels, and mindful of the needs of people with visual, hearing, or mobility impairments. In a crisis, this is not a communication “option.” It is a means of protecting rights.
    Conclusion: protecting energy infrastructure means protecting people
    The coming winter will again confront Ukraine with exceptionally difficult questions. We do not know how intense the attacks will be, how severe the frost may become, or which facilities Russia will seek to strike. But we already know the essential truth: energy is not only about generation, networks, and transformers.
    Energy is the right not to be left alone in the dark.
    It is a patient’s right to receive care. A child’s right to stay warm. An older person’s right to have water. A person with a disability’s right to reach a safe place. A community’s right to know the truth about risks and receive support when those risks become real.
    Ukraine must prepare for the next heating season not only as a technical challenge. It must prepare as a state for which human dignity does not disappear when the lights go out.
    That is the true meaning of resilience.