Home › Opinion › Power, plunder and the war on 17 February 2026
Power, plunder and the war on 17 February 2026
Summary
A look back at a day when strikes hit Ukrainian energy workers and the arrest of a former energy minister cast a light on the sector's own troubles.
What does it mean to defend a country's energy system when the threats come from both outside and within? On 17 February 2026, Ukraine faced the first kind in the form of drones and missiles, and, two days after a high-profile arrest, the second kind in the form of a corruption case.
Strikes on the people who keep the lights on
On 17 February 2026, three engineers from the Sloviansk Thermal Power Plant were killed in a Russian drone attack on a vehicle in Mykolaivka, Donetsk Oblast. Another engineer was injured. The victims were energy workers, part of the effort to keep power and heating running in a region on the Eastern front, where Donetsk, Luhansk and Kharkiv have been a theatre of operations since February 2022.
The same day, large-scale Russian strikes hit Sumy Oblast. At least six people were injured, and buildings and vehicles were damaged.
The energy war runs both ways
Two days earlier, on 15 February 2026, the pattern of attacks on power infrastructure had also been visible on the Russian side of the border. Authorities reported widespread outages in several Russian oblasts, including Belgorod and Bryansk, after a large-scale Ukrainian missile and drone attack on power stations. The governor of Bryansk Oblast, Alexander Bogomaz, confirmed that the regional capital, Bryansk, had lost most of its electricity and heat supply.
A different kind of damage
Also on 15 February 2026, Ukraine's National Anti-Corruption Bureau arrested former energy minister German Galushchenko at the state border. He was detained as part of Operation Midas, over his alleged involvement in a ₴4 billion (about US$100 million) kickback scheme in the energy sector. As reported at the time, he was arrested while trying to leave Ukraine by train.
Operation Midas was an investigation by the bureau and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office, launched in 2024, into large-scale bribery in the energy sector during the war. The data-gathering phase lasted 15 months, with more than 70 searches, 4 million US dollars seized and about 1,000 hours of recorded conversations of suspects.
Why the juxtaposition matters
The events of 17 February 2026 and the days just before it show an energy sector under pressure from several directions. Engineers died doing their jobs in Donetsk Oblast. Russian regions lost power and heat after Ukrainian strikes. And in Kyiv, investigators moved against a former minister over alleged theft in the very sector that the war had made so vital. The reports do not tie these developments together, but they sat side by side in the same news cycle.
