Ukrainian energy workers brave Russian attacks to keep lights on

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Friends often ask Mykhailo whether the Ukrainian power plant worker hides in a shelter when Russia bombards the energy system.

“If all the turbine operators hid during attacks, there’d be no energy left,” he said, standing inside the machine hall of a thermal power plant. “We have to stay at our posts. Who else would do the job?”

Almost four years into Russia’s invasion, keeping Ukraine’s lights on has become a battle of its own — fought along a moving front line. Engineers repeatedly repair transformers, switchyards, and power lines that Russia strikes again and again while using bomb-laden drones to hunt workers’ trucks near the border. And that work repairing damage from Russian attacks is happening when a major embezzlement and kickbacks scandal at the state-owned nuclear power company has put top officials under scrutiny.

Since the war began at least 160 energy workers have been killed, including a colleague of Mykhailo’s. More than 300 others have been wounded. Yet tens of thousands still head out each day — sometimes fearful, sometimes resigned, often driven by a quiet mission to bring light through the darkness.

Mykhailo has worked in the energy sector for 23 years and never imagined his daily reality could be so perilous. Mykhailo spoke on condition that his surname — and that of his former colleague, Dmytro — not be used because of heightened security concerns about his location.

Mykhailo was just a few meters away when Dmytro was killed. “I was simply luckier,” Mykhailo said quietly.

The AP had met Dmytro in 2024, after an earlier strike on the plant. At the time, Dmytro said he would “work as long as I can.” He died seven months later.

Energy workers became targets

In the northern city of Chernihiv, Andrii Dzhuma, 58, has spent more than three decades replacing and repairing the same power lines he helped build — when old wooden poles were swapped for new concrete ones and Ukraine was still part of the Soviet Union.

Since the war began, Dzhuma has patched nearly 100 kilometers (65 miles) of damaged wires — not to modernize, but to restore what’s been shattered.

“Somehow, but we still give people light,” he said. He is proud of his work, even though it makes him a potential target.

For many energy workers, that realization changes little in their routine. They keep showing up.

“Better I become a target for Russia than civilians or soldiers,” said 24-year-old Bohdan Bilous, dressed in his work uniform while repairing power lines in the northern town of Shostka, which was plunged into blackout last month after heavy strikes.

Bilous said his shifts often stretch more than 12 hours, sometimes under the buzz of drones.

“If one hits me, of course, it’ll be sad for everyone. But I’ll be glad it wasn’t a child, or a residential building. In a way, it’s a kind of self-sacrifice.”

On Oct. 10, crane operator Anatoliy Savchenko, 47, was struck by a drone while driving home from a substation in the Chernihiv region. While he survived that initial strike, a second drone hit after colleagues gathered together to help him. Savchenko and worker Ruslan Deynega, 45, were both killed.

“Nobody thought that this would happen,” said Liudmyla Savchenko, Anatoliy’s widow. “Especially since they were already returning home.”

Energy workers know people depend on them

For Oleksandr Tomchuk, a repair and maintenance supervisor for substations in the Kyiv region, his work has become a mission.

“The main thing is that our soldiers hold the front so the Russians don’t come here,” Tomchuk said. We’ll do everything to make sure people don’t freeze this winter.”

Called in the middle of the night, he gathers his team within a half hour and rushes to a drone-damaged substation. Their job is as urgent as that of rescuers, says Tomchuck, who lived through the Russian occupation of his village early in the war.

“Their heat, comfort and quality of life depend on us.”

Electrical equipment the West provides for repairs is vital, he said.

“They give us the resources to keep repairing. We’ll keep restoring and restoring, no matter if we fixed it yesterday and it’s hit again today. That’s our fate, our mission.”

“There’s no such thing as tiredness,” he added, sitting at home after a long day as his three children swirl around him. His youngest son, born during the war, clings to his arm.

“What tiredness? He has three kids!” his wife, Olena Tomchenko, interjects with a laugh. “He rests at work.”

They both laugh, but they know the risks are real.

“Of course, we understand the danger,” Tomchuk said. His work allows him to be away from substations during air raids, but not every energy worker is that lucky.

‘Light doesn’t come from machines’

The danger often weighs on workers’ morale, Mykhailo said, but most hide their fear, and they joke and support each other.

Returning after Dmytro’s death was not easy.

“No one chained me here. I could leave anytime,” Mykhailo said. “But if I quit, I lose my specialty — and most likely, I’d have to go to the front line.”

He sees no good options.

“It’s scary and hard mentally,” Mykhailo said. “You go to work knowing that maybe (you can be killed) … and you just do it through effort and willpower.”

Dmytro began working in energy in 1995. After Russian forces invaded in 2022, he fled his hometown in southern Ukraine after it was occupied. His safety was at risk because he refused to sign a contract with Moscow-installed authorities at the energy facility where he worked. Dmytro’s wife, Tetiana, described him as “reliable, loving, kind and bright” and said he knew the risks with his job.

“I often saw fear in his eyes when he went to work,” she said. That day, as he was leaving, he noted that Russian missiles had entered Ukraine’s airspace, she said.

“Light doesn’t come from machines. It comes from people who risk their lives to bring it,” Tetiana said. “If they stop going to work, there will be no gas, no heat, no light.”