Ukraine goes dark: images from space dispel the fear of the nation

No electricity, no light, no water, no heating. In Ukraine, waves of Russian missiles have attacked the country’s infrastructure over the past year, leading to daily battles for civilians and months of frantic repairs to keep the electricity going.

An American satellite has revealed this eclipse of the entire nation and created a vivid companion to portraits of its people’s misery and perseverance. The satellite images of city lights flickering across Ukraine highlight the magnitude of the humanitarian disaster in a way that is otherwise hard to imagine.

The satellite, launched in 2011, has powerful night vision that is equal to or better than anything the human eye can see in the dark. Thus, the dimming of certain cities is clearly visible from 500 miles up, providing a stark contrast to Ukraine’s brightly lit neighbors such as Poland and Russia.

“There are massive blackouts,” he said Eleanor Stokesa chief scientist at NASA Black Marble project, which processes the night images. “It gets depressing.”

Cities like Kiev, captured by satellite before the war like a spidery web of light, fade and break in the months that follow. More broadly, the impact of the Russian invasion is evident when we compare the brightness of Ukraine before the February 24 raid last year with that in the months that followed, as Europe’s second-largest nation plunged into intermittent darkness.

The footage also shows the effects of attacks on Russian infrastructure, which kicked off last fall as Moscow launched a new offensive to weaponize winter. Struggling on the battlefield, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia tried to make civilian life as difficult as possible, depriving millions of heat, light and water in the hope that widespread suffering in the bitter cold would break the spirit of Ukraine. December was the coldest and darkest time for Ukraine since World War II.

Not all blackouts are due to Russian strikes. To prevent the country’s power grid from collapsing, Ukrainian officials have sometimes conducted blackouts and controlled blackouts so they can equalize electricity supplies and carefully distribute available power. Improved air defenses and engineers working under constant threat of attack have also contributed to the survival of the network.

Street lights in Kharkiv, Ukraine recently came on for the first time, while the portable generators needed by businesses in Kiev went out. And for the first time since October, on some days Ukraine can generate more power than it consumes.

“Despite the cold, darkness and rocket attacks, Ukraine persevered and defeated the winter terror,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said earlier this month.

The nighttime images come from a satellite named after Verner E. Suomi, a scientist at the University of Wisconsin who pioneered early satellite cameras. Suomi is jointly administered by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Previously had the satellite night sensor captured images from wildfires, gas flares, lava flows, light pollution and power outages from hurricanes.

The night sensor works by observing the Earth not only in visible wavelengths, but also in infrared, revealing radiant heat energy. Processing removes clouds and corrects numerous distortions. The result is not a camera-like image but a custom for accurate measurement.

What follows is a visual examination of Ukraine’s diminished city lights. It contains short visualizations made from monthly composite images of the satellite’s daily measurements.

What’s in this visualization: This is eastern Ukraine, a frontline of fighting since 2014, when Moscow-backed separatists began fighting the Kiev government. It shows how the lights started to flash as Russia attacked Ukraine from the south, east and north, hitting major cities like Mariupol, Dnipro and Zaporizhzhia. The range also includes the separatist, Russian-aligned parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, denoted by the dotted line within a region known as the Donbas.

What happened on the ground: This part of Ukraine is getting darker as the war continues and virtually all visible communities go offline.

The largest nuclear power plant in Europe is located near the city of Zaporizhzhia. Before the war, it supplied 20 percent of Ukraine’s energy needs. When Russia seized the factory in March, engineers had to scale back production because of the danger the fighting posed. When the reactors were taken offline, millions of people across the country were briefly without power.

For much of the summer, the front line did not change dramatically as Russia tried to make new gains through relentless artillery bombardment. In the western Donbas region, that tactic left a dark trail of destruction — nearly all the towns and cities Russia has captured since the full-scale invasion have been reduced to lightless ruins.

Throughout the period, cities in the southeast of the visualization are mostly spared from darkness because they are under Russian occupation. Life in areas controlled by the separatist groups – the Donetsk People’s Republic and the Luhansk People’s Republic – is limping forward. Although the lights have remained on in those places, in October President Putin declared martial law in some areas he occupied, causing the Kremlin to far reaching powers to seize property, conduct searches, restrict freedom of movement, resettle residents and detain citizens.

Kiev, the incredibly shrinking capital

What’s in this visualization: This is Kiev, the capital and most populous city of Ukraine, as well as the surrounding areas and communities. At the end of 2021, they are brightly lit, but dimmed as they become early targets of the Russian invasion. In the fall of 2022, the city’s lights will be further reduced due to controlled blackouts and infrastructure attacks by Russia.

(Bright spots visible east of Kiev in late 2022 are industrial sites, most likely large commercial greenhouses picked up by the satellite.)

What happened on the ground: The Russian invasion began with the Kremlin firing missiles at targets across Ukraine and then a ground attack to overthrow the government in Kiev. Despite being outmaneuvered and outgunned, the Ukrainians beat back the Russians and drove them back across the northern border.

Amid these battles, Kiev’s light footprint shrank as surrounding cities and towns lost power.

Attacks aimed at knocking out Kiev’s power intensified in October, and by mid-November the city was plunged into near-total darkness. Waves of rocket attacks came at least once a week for about two months, wreaking havoc on basic services.

The loss of power affected more than the lights. When the water stopped flowing for several days, people were forced to line up at stone wells in the city. Elevators in high-rise buildings broke down, often trapping passengers. Car accidents were on the rise. Sensitive operations were performed by the light of headlights. People bundled up from the cold when the central heating system failed.

But with improved air defenses, attacks became less frequent as Russia was running low on missiles. Engineers made repairs and the situation stabilized and then improved. By this spring, there were no more rolling blackouts. On some sunny days in March, Ukraine was even able to produce more energy than it consumed. A bombing raid on March 9 caused disruption, but power was fully restored to the city three days after the attack.

Flickering Odessa and its permanent neighbors

What’s in this visualization: This also applies to Odessa, an important Ukrainian port on the Black Sea; Mykolaiv and Kherson, towns close to the shifting front lines that have both felt the ferocity of war; Crimea, a peninsula that Russia annexed in 2014; and Melitopol, a landlocked city that Russia seized during the 2022 invasion.

What happened on the ground: The capture of Odessa – founded in 1794 by Catherine the Great, the Russian empress, as a gateway to the Mediterranean – is Mr. Putin’s obsession. The fabled port was regularly hit by Russian attacks during the war and threatened by Russian warships, but remains far from the front lines. In December, Odessa was hit by drone strikes that plunged more than 1.5 million people into darkness. In the visualization, the lights of the city go on and off amid the strikes and the struggle to make repairs.

Crimea remains illuminated throughout the war – a clear reminder of its occupation by Russia. Home to many Russian troops and military bases, the peninsula has been a major staging post for attacks on the rest of Ukraine. The satellite images clearly show the steady lights of two cities on the peninsula: Sevastopol, home to Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, and Simferopol, the capital of Crimea. Part of Russia’s strategy in southern Ukraine was to create a “land bridge” connecting Crimea with the occupied parts of the Donbas.

Melitopol – a city that remains lit on the extreme right over Crimea even when nearby towns and villages go dark – was occupied by Russian troops early in the war. In recent months, Ukrainian troops have hit targets in Melitopol with the help of Ukrainian partisans living under occupation. Those attacks indicate that Melitopol could become one of Kiev’s main targets. Retaking the city could help Ukrainian forces take back the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson region and launch an offensive that could potentially drive Russian forces back to the Crimean peninsula.

What’s in this visualization: This is Mariupol, a city in southeastern Ukraine, located on the northern coast of the Sea of ​​​​Azov. Mariupol, a port with a thriving steel industry and miles of beaches, will change from brightly lit to eerie dark from November 2021 to December 2022. Scattered lighting returns late in the year.

What happened on the ground: Russian soldiers surrounded Mariupol in the first weeks of the war and then laid siege to the city. They bombed a maternity hospital and a theater where dozens of women and children took refuge. Russian forces employed siege tactics and cut the city from power while trying to force Ukrainian fighters defending the city to surrender.

After 80 days of a final disposition in the twisted ruins of the Azovstal Iron and Steel Works, the Ukrainian defenders were ordered to retreat and in May 2022 the Russians took control of the city. It lay in ruins. Residents who made it describe little effort to restore essential services, contrary to Russian claims. In the fall of 2022, however, some lights came on again.