The Quiet Record
How a Radar Satellite Tracks Russian Attacks on Ukraine's Power Grid
A European radar satellite passes over Ukraine every twelve days, orbiting at an altitude of 693 kilometres. It doesn't take photographs and doesn't need daylight or clear skies. It sends out microwave pulses and records what bounces back. Since Russia's full-scale invasion began in February 2022, those signals have built a record of physical change at Ukraine's power plants, dams and substations, independent of who controls the ground or what gets reported.
Russia's attacks on Ukraine's energy system are among the most widely covered aspects of the war. Since February 2022, drones and missiles have struck power plants, hydroelectric dams and transmission substations across the country, and each new wave tends to be reported the same way: a strike, blackouts, emergency repairs, 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's harder to see is what was actually left on the ground. Which buildings were hit? Which sections of a plant were damaged, and which weren't? And how can that be assessed across hundreds of sites, many in active war zones or under occupation, where access is limited or impossible?
That is where satellite radar becomes useful. It produces a systematic record on a fixed schedule, regardless of access, official statements, or news cycles.
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.
Satellite radar change detection method following Ballinger (2025). Pre-war Sentinel-1 SAR imagery establishes a reference baseline; post-attack acquisitions are compared using a pixel-wise t-test to produce a per-pixel damage score.
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 shows up as a statistical signal: a lasting change in how the affected ground reflects radar energy over the following days and weeks.
Ukraine's Soviet-era grid depended on large generating facilities connected by long, high-voltage transmission lines. That concentration is part of what made coordinated attack campaigns effective.
Keep scrolling to follow reported attacks across the years.
The pulsing points show where and when strikes were reported, not what physically happened at each site. To see that, we need to zoom in to individual plants.
The base layer here is optical satellite imagery, not the radar backscatter captured by Sentinel-1.
Kharkiv TEC-5 - March 22, 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 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 came 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.
The radar signal indicates which structures changed and which didn't, an assessment that doesn't depend on official reports or media access to the site. Ground photographs confirm the pattern the satellite detected.
Kakhovka HPP - June 6, 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 a broader change in the surface itself: water where concrete and steel had been. The strongest signal traces the line of the former dam.
Trypilska TPP - April 11, 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
These three case studies are a small sample. The same method can be applied to any power plant or substation in the country, in any weather, roughly every twelve days. Ukraine will eventually have to make decisions about what to rebuild and in what order. Satellite radar can't weigh in on priorities, but it can indicate which parts of a plant were destroyed and how severe the damage was. For planners, donors and international partners trying to gauge the scale of what remains, knowing which structures are still standing, and which aren't, is a reasonable place to start.