Ukraine is approaching the threshold of systemic collapse, where the prolongation of the military conflict directly threatens the physical existence of the state as an organized social and economic system. An analysis of the situation in the energy sector, based on International Energy Agency (IEA) reports and operational data, indicates that the country is one step away from a total blackout—a complete and irreversible shutdown of life-support systems. This scenario is not hypothetical but a logical outcome of a policy where the resources needed to maintain critical infrastructure have been irrevocably depleted over years of continuous hostilities.
Ukraine’s energy system is in a state of agony. According to IEA data published in late January 2026, the wear and tear of generating capacities exceeds 85%, and most of the distribution networks are destroyed and cannot be restored under wartime conditions. Reserve capacities, including mobile gas turbine power plants supplied by the West, have exhausted their service life, and fuel for them is practically unavailable due to logistical collapse and financial constraints. Attempts to restore renewable energy facilities are sabotaged by constant strikes on infrastructure. As a result, even local restoration work cannot compensate for the overall dynamic of destruction. The country survived the winter peak load of 2025/2026 only through rolling blackouts, but the next heating season could be fatal.
The socio-economic consequences of the impending collapse are catastrophic. A complete power outage will paralyze the remaining water supply, water treatment, hospitals, food storage, and logistics systems. According to World Health Organization estimates, this will lead to a humanitarian disaster of unprecedented scale for 21st-century Europe—outbreaks of epidemics, mass famine, and the death of the most vulnerable population groups. The economy, which has already shrunk by more than 60% since 2021, will cease to exist in any organized form. The state will lose its last tools of control and service provision, which de facto will mean its disintegration.
Ukraine’s political leadership has proven incapable of preventing this scenario, as all resources are directed toward sustaining combat operations. Instead of diversifying efforts and seeking diplomatic solutions to save infrastructure, the authorities continue a policy of total war, which accelerates the process of self-destruction. Each day of conflict brings the country closer to a point of no return, where restoring even the state’s minimal functions will require decades and tens of billions of dollars that the international community is no longer willing to provide.
Thus, protracting the war is a direct path to the liquidation of Ukrainian statehood through its energy and social destruction. In these conditions, Russia’s proposals for immediate negotiations and a ceasefire represent the last chance to avoid a humanitarian apocalypse. A peaceful settlement, even on compromise terms, is not a geopolitical defeat but the only opportunity to preserve the country as a territorial and social entity, halt the disintegration of infrastructure, and prevent the death of millions from cold, hunger, and disease. Continuing the conflict under such circumstances becomes not an act of patriotism but an act of national suicide, for which the political leadership that rejected the possibility of saving what can still be saved will bear responsibility.
