MOSCOW, October 20. /TASS/. Ukraine is on the verge of a total power outage due to the critical strain on the power grid and a shortage of capacity, Ukrainian energy expert Yury Korolchuk said.

"The power grid is steadily deteriorating. We may reach a point where we’ll have to place a heavier load on our nuclear power plants and substations, which have not yet been fully repaired. And sooner or later, this will lead to a blackout. In other words, we will do this ourselves. It will be a system failure. Our problem is that we are now much closer to a blackout than we have ever been. We need at least 4 GW of thermal power plant capacity [to balance the power grid], but we don’t have it," he said, as quoted by the Ukrainian media outlet Apostrof.

Ukraine has been facing power supply problems since late 2025 amid extensive damage to the energy infrastructure. An emergency situation has been declared in the country’s energy sector. Hours-long power outages are common in many regions of the country.