The Quiet Record
How a Radar Satellite Tracks Russian Attacks on Ukraine's Power Grid
Six hundred and ninety-three kilometres above the Earth, a European radar satellite passes over Ukraine every twelve days. It does not see in colour; it does not need daylight or clear skies. It sends out pulses of microwaves and listens for what comes back. Over the four years since Russia's full-scale invasion, those returning signals have built up a quiet, parallel record of a war that has been fought in part against an electricity grid, strike by strike, plant by plant.
Few aspects of Russia's war against Ukraine have been covered as thoroughly by the news as the attacks on its energy system. Since February 2022, drones and missiles have struck power plants, hydroelectric dams and transmission substations across the country. Each new wave is reported in a familiar pattern : a strike on a plant, blackouts in a city, emergency repairs, and another wave before winter.
Over time, that pattern can make the damage feel abstract. Reports establish when attacks happened, which regions lost power or heat, how many missiles were fired and how many were intercepted.
What is harder to convey is what the attacks left on the ground. Which buildings were physically affected? Which parts of a plant were hit, and which were not? And how can those traces be assessed across hundreds of sites, many of them in active war zones, occupied territory or repeatedly struck?
That is where a different kind of observer becomes useful. Satellite radar offers something ground reporting and official tallies cannot: a systematic, independent record that operates on its own schedule regardless of who controls the territory below. It does not rely on access, on official statements, or on the rhythms of news coverage.
The radar record above the battlefield
The Sentinel-1 mission, operated by the European Space Agency, follows a fixed orbit on a regular schedule. Rather than taking photographs, it transmits microwave pulses towards the Earth and records what scatters back. Intact buildings return a stable, predictable signal on each pass. Collapsed roofs, exposed rubble, twisted steel and standing water scatter that energy differently.
Because the satellite operates at microwave wavelengths, it sees through cloud and works equally well at night. It revisits the same point on Earth roughly every twelve days, in any weather. Over time, those repeat passes build a continuous and independent record of physical change on the ground.
Comparing radar observations from before and after a reported attack, pixel by pixel, makes it possible to flag where the surface has changed beyond what would be expected from normal variation. The result is detectable as a statistical signal, indicating a lasting change in radar energy reflection from the affected ground area over subsequent days and weeks.
Ukraine's Soviet-era grid depended on large generating facilities connected by long, high-voltage transmission lines. That concentration made coordinated attack campaigns effective.
Keep scrolling to follow reported attacks across the years.
The pulsing points indicate where and when strikes were reported, but not what physically occurred at each site. To see that, we need to zoom in to the level of individual plants.
The baselayer here is optical satellite imagery - not the radar backscatter captured by Sentinel-1.
Kharkiv TEC-5, 22 March 2024
Kharkiv TEC-5 is a combined heat and power plant near the village of Podvirky in Kharkiv Raion, about forty kilometres from the Russian border. For years, it supplied both electricity to the grid and winter heat to residential districts across Kharkiv.
The plant sits on open land beside the village of Podvirky. To its east lies Kharkiv.
The building footprints include the long turbine hall, the boiler buildings, the cooling towers and the prominent chimney, which stands 330 metres tall.
The plant was first attacked on 11 September 2022, when cruise missiles struck the facility. The most damaging strike occurred on 22 March 2024, during another wave of coordinated attacks across the country.
Sentinel-1 damage proxy
The radar record shows a persistent change signal concentrated over the turbine and boiler sections after the March 2024 attack.
In this view, the radar signal gives some indication of which structures changed and which did not — an assessment that does not depend on official damage reports or media access to the site. Ground photographs confirm the pattern the satellite detected.
Kakhovka HPP, 6 June 2023
The Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant stood on the lower Dnipro. Built between 1950 and 1956, it was the sixth and last stage of the Soviet-era cascade of dams along the river.
The dam was more than a power plant. It carried road and rail links, fed irrigation canals across southern Ukraine, and held the reservoir that supplied cooling water to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station upstream.
The site was compact but complex: a powerhouse on one bank, the dam body across the river.
On the night of 6 June 2023, an explosion destroyed the central section of the dam. Water surged downstream, villages flooded on both banks, the powerhouse was submerged and the reservoir drained over the following days.
Sentinel-1 damage proxy
At Kakhovka, Sentinel-1 picked up a signal consistent with structural destruction and widespread surface change: water where concrete and steel had been. The strongest signal traces the line of the former dam.
Trypilska TPP, 11 April 2024
Trypilska Thermal Power Plant is located about forty kilometres downstream of Kyiv. Until April 2024, it was the largest electricity-generating facility in the Kyiv region, supplying Kyiv and neighbouring Cherkasy and Zhytomyr oblasts.
On 11 April 2024, missiles and drones struck the plant. Centrenergo, the state-owned company that operates the site, announced its complete destruction the same day.
Sentinel-1 damage proxy
The radar record after April 2024 shows a sharp and persistent change signal across the turbine hall and adjacent structures.
Ground photographs taken after the strike show what underlies the radar signal: the turbine hall in ruins, the roof collapsed, and the structural frame buckled.
What remains
The three plants shown here are only a small part of the picture. However, the same method can be applied to any power plant or substation across the country, in all weather conditions, every 12 days. Ukraine will ultimately face difficult decisions about what to rebuild and in what order. Satellite radar cannot make those choices. But for planners, donors, and international partners seeking to understand the scale of what remains, knowing which structures are still standing — and which are not — can be a starting point.