What EU problems 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.
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.
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.
Read more about the weak points of the European energy system and how Ukrainian experience can help address them in the article by Mariia Tsaturian of the Ukraine Facility Platform: Europe fails the resilience test: what the Berlin blackout revealed and how Ukraine can help.
For decades, Europe’s energy infrastructure was built on the assumption that no one would ever attack it.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The key lessons Ukraine has learned during the war – along with a sober sense of the limits – can help underpin Europe’s resilience: your energy system is guaranteed to become a target; a system always collapses to the level of its preparation; during or after an attack, there is no time to learn procedures, because there is no such thing as 100 percent protection.
Ukraine can help Europe prepare for realistic crisis scenarios that 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.
At the same time, 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.