Europe fails the resilience test: what the Berlin blackout revealed and how Ukraine can help

Europe is only gradually coming to terms with its own fragility in the face of hybrid and physical threats to energy infrastructure and other critical systems.

A blackout in peaceful Berlin, caused by sabotage on 3 January, left around 45,000 households and up to 2,000 businesses without electricity and heating for several days. And this incident is neither isolated nor unique.

Over the years of Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine, sabotage targeting energy infrastructure and other critical assets in European cities – in France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom – has increasingly shaped a new European security landscape.

These acts of sabotage share a common pattern: local extremist groups strike urban networks, set fire to transformers and other equipment, and damage cables and communications nodes. And, as the Berlin case showed,

the logic is the same: such attacks are cheap and simple to carry out – and exceptionally effective.

Add to this incidents involving damage to undersea gas, electricity and telecommunications networks in Finland, Norway, Sweden and Denmark, and the picture becomes even more alarming.

Peaceful Europe is not being hit where it traditionally believed itself strongest, but where it had grown used to expecting no blow at all: critical infrastructure.

Europe’s model for managing and developing energy systems took shape over many years in stable conditions, with a low level of physical threats. What in peacetime was considered effective, economically sound and safe has, in today’s reality, become a source of additional risks and vulnerabilities.

The Berlin incident, in which five high-voltage transmission lines (110 kV each) were damaged simultaneously, along with around a dozen lower-voltage lines (10–30 kV), vividly exposed elements of infrastructure fragility typical of many European countries.

A system that did not expect attacks

What weak points in Europe’s energy system did the Berlin attack bring to light?

First, the absence of genuine backup transmission lines capable of rapidly restoring supply to a city after an incident. The basic reliability principle for power systems N-1 means the system should continue operating even if one key element fails: a line, a transformer or a substation.

For consumers, this should be imperceptible: the load is meant to be picked up by a reserve.

In Berlin, however, this principle appears to have been followed largely in form rather than in substance: five high-voltage cables were laid in a single duct. If one fails, four remain.

But damage to that duct means the simultaneous loss of all cables at once. This architecture of underground distribution networks in European capitals is not universal, but it remains fairly common.

Second, the vulnerability of underground urban networks under certain scenarios. They are indeed more resilient to extreme weather and drone attacks than overhead lines, but they have one critical weak point: access points above ground.

Disabling such assets requires far cheaper and simpler means than drones. At the same time, repairing underground infrastructure is technologically more complex and takes longer.

Third, when you move from city networks to backbone infrastructure, the number of bottlenecks only increases. Unlike power plants, which usually have a high level of physical protection, high-voltage substations in many European countries remain poorly secured.

Automated control, minimal staff and security presence, lack of video surveillance, and a perimeter fenced off with ordinary chain-link – all of this makes them vulnerable.

In recent years, the situation has begun to change: France, Poland, the Baltic states and Northern European countries are investing in physical protection for energy infrastructure. Yet this approach is still far from uniform across Europe.

A rethink is also needed in the way European power systems are managed and balanced. These approaches are changing more slowly than the architecture of the systems themselves where, since the early 2020s, the share of renewables has risen sharply.

Only the total blackout in Spain and Portugal in spring 2025 – in which renewables played some role – prompted European energy professionals to launch a serious, high-level debate about changing how the system is balanced.

These signs of energy fragility have not only technical roots, but historical and worldview ones as well.

For decades, European power systems were built around a people-centred logic – focusing on economic efficiency, operational convenience, environmental considerations and public safety.

The NIMBY ("not in my back yard") mindset common in Germany and other EU countries – a reluctance to live near high-voltage networks or host them in one’s community – directly shaped infrastructure architecture. It brings clear advantages that Ukraine’s system sometimes lacks, but it also creates vulnerabilities that, under sustained hybrid attacks, require a reassessment of planning approaches themselves.

The broader worldview context emerged after the Second World War and for a long time was reinforced by American security guarantees. Its formula was "never again war". For decades, this principle shaped European decisions – from economics to defence.

In energy terms it is: "no one will ever attack critical infrastructure". That is why it seemed logical to route several high-voltage lines through a single duct – and not to invest in enhanced physical protection for substations.

Russia’s war against Ukraine, and its mass attacks on Ukraine’s energy system, became an "ice-cold shower" for Europe.

America’s geopolitical unpredictability has only amplified the effect. The shift in mindset has happened – but it still lags behind the pace of the new reality, in which the threat of war on EU territory is no longer unthinkable. It is precisely this gap between old logic and new risks that produces today’s European vulnerability.

This text requires an important caveat. It is not about Europe being weak, nor about Ukraine’s energy system being "better".

Europe’s continental power grid is one of the most powerful and complex technological systems in the world, and European approaches to planning, development and strategy implementation remain an unquestionable benchmark to emulate. Europeans understand well what needs to change.

That is why the European Commission is advancing the strategic logic of a Preparedness Union – systemic readiness of states, communities and critical-infrastructure operators to function amid crises, attacks and large-scale disruptions.

This logic is also embedded in the CER Directive (Critical Entities Resilience) – binding EU legislation requiring critical-infrastructure operators to identify vulnerabilities, prepare business-continuity plans, hold reserves, protect personnel, and regularly demonstrate that systems can function during incidents. This is not abstract "security", but resilience that can be verified.

At the same time, these vulnerabilities are now also Ukraine’s vulnerabilities.

We are physically integrated into Europe’s energy system, moving towards EU membership, and on the battlefield fighting for the right to be part of Europe’s security space. This is the story of an overlooked aspect of Ukraine’s European integration: building energy resilience together – where Ukraine is not merely a recipient of European aid and the EU not simply a donor, but partners.

The Ukraine Facility Platform’s approach is to combine Europe’s institutional, regulatory and technological strengths with Ukraine’s practical, wartime experience – to achieve win-win results in building shared energy resilience.

Ukrainian lessons for the EU

The key lessons Ukraine has learned during the war – along with a sober sense of the limits – can help underpin Europe’s resilience.

Lesson 1. If you are attacked, your energy system is guaranteed to become a target. This is an obvious military strategy.

The home front depends on  secure energy supply: the economy, communications, healthcare and basic daily life.

That is why the illusion that "reserves are sufficient" is dangerous.

Work must focus on solutions that first answer the question: how will the power system behave after a mass strike, and how long will it take to restore control, integrity and operational capacity?

Lesson 2. In a crisis, a system always collapses to the level of its preparation – not to the level of expectations.

In plain terms, what matters is whether crisis scenarios have been rehearsed; whether critical equipment is at hand; whether the public knows what to do; and whether coordination works between critical-infrastructure operators, communities and central government. This determines whether a crisis becomes a catastrophe.

Lesson 3. Time is the most valuable resource. During or after an attack, there is no time to learn procedures, source replacement equipment, or determine whether engineers have been trained to repair or install it.

Lesson 4. There is no such thing as 100 percent protection – neither air defence nor physical security. Any system can be breached; any perimeter can be bypassed; any reserves can be destroyed or exhausted if attacks are systematic and targeted.

This does not mean protection is unnecessary. It means relying on protection alone is a strategic mistake. But without it, minimising the consequences of an attack, sabotage or assault will be many times harder, more expensive – and, crucially, slower.

Ukraine can help Europe prepare for realistic crisis scenarios: simultaneous mass strikes on generation, substations and grids; repeat attacks on restored assets; combined physical and cyberattacks; prolonged energy shortages; and constraints caused by depleted equipment stocks and staffing challenges.

These scenarios can be used directly for stress tests, with a clear understanding of what fails first and why.

Ukraine can also be a partner in practical cross-sector training.

Joint exercises for grid operators, municipalities, utilities and the military – rehearsing prolonged power-outage scenarios – allow systems to be tested under shortages of resources and time: precisely the dimension the EU currently lacks.

Ukraine has a practical understanding of which equipment is worth keeping in reserve and which manufacturing lead times are critical. This experience can inform the creation of European reserves, mechanisms for rapid redeployment, and shared warehouses and repair hubs.

Ukraine’s experience also offers a realistic view of physical protection: it makes it possible to shift the focus from trying to "protect everything" towards managing inevitable losses and reducing restoration time.

What should Ukraine take into account?

According to Ukraine Facility Platform estimates, during the full-scale war the EU has provided Ukraine with around €5bn in assistance for rebuilding and restoring the energy sector. Yet beyond funding, Europe can offer Ukraine something often missing in reconstruction: the ability to drive decisions through systematically to results.

Europe can help Ukraine accelerate a qualitative shift in the architecture of its energy system – towards a decentralised model that is more resilient to Russian attacks and better prepared for integration with the European market.

Lesson 1. Technology. Europe’s advantage is greatest in three areas. First, battery energy storage systems (BESS) and flexibility management: large batteries combined with flexibility markets make distributed generation stable rather than chaotic. Ukraine is already moving into industrial-scale BESS projects, and these solutions will enable effective balancing in the future.

Second, software-based aggregation of thousands of small generators and consumers into a single controllable resource.

For Ukraine, this means a faster, cheaper impact without massive additional grid build-out.

Third, microgrids for critical infrastructure, where the "green" component performs best in combination with other technologies – particularly gas-fired generation. This strengthens resilience for individual communities as well as entire regions.

Lesson 2. Rules and standards. Without them, neither money nor technology works. In Ukraine’s 2025 strategic documents, decentralisation is already declared as a direction – but the next critical step is translating this logic into secondary legislation and the operational protocols of critical-infrastructure operators. Here, European practices are an important reference point and a prerequisite for attracting private investment.

Investing in transparent, intelligible projects to build decentralised generation in the regions – based on cooperation between private business and communities – is an alternative to the grant-based financial assistance Ukraine receives from the EU. Shifting from aid to investment incentives would be far more effective.

Lesson 3. Communication and coordination. An honest, adult conversation with the public and effective cooperation between infrastructure operators, the regulator, government and communities is key to emerging from a crisis with minimal losses.

An underestimated dimension of cooperation with the EU is its ability not only to adopt strategies, but to implement them.

Europe’s advantage here is not in ideas, but in managerial discipline: clear roles, accountability, monitoring and course correction along the way. For Ukraine, where strategic documents often exist in parallel to operational reality, this experience is as

Mariia Tsaturian, 

сhief сommunication officer and an analyst at the Ukraine Facility Platform