01/25/2026

Late on Saturday evening, January 24, a series of explosions were heard in  Belgorod, Russia, after which the city was plunged into a blackout. Also on the night of January 25, a number of other Russian cities in various regions of the aggressor country were left without electricity , probably due to attacks on energy infrastructure facilities.

This is reported by the Russians themselves in their own public forums. The authorities in the Russian Federation do not always acknowledge such attacks and talk about “planned work” on power grids. In turn, the OSINT community Exilenova+ has collected vivid videos of such “work” on the ground.

What’s happening in Belgorod

Belgorod Region Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov admitted that the blackout in the city was caused by shelling, which he called the “most massive” of all time.

According to him, about 40 missiles were allegedly fired at the city, and although most of them were allegedly shot down, the Belgorod CHP and “other energy infrastructure facilities” were hit.

The attack on Belgorod lasted until midnight on January 25, after which 
the “battle” was picked up by other regions of the aggressor country.

What’s happening in other cities?

In Taganrog, during an air raid alert, they reported the threat of drone attacks. Immediately after that, local residents began to talk about fires, explosions, and power outages in residential buildings.

However, local authorities did not admit that the city was under attack, and the blackout in the city allegedly occurred due to a banal transformer failure.

In Perm, a blackout occurred in Zakamsk (where the Perm Gunpowder Plant is located). 
Explosions were also heard in the city of Orel and  in the Bryansk region at this time.

Where exactly did the light disappear?

“Orc authorities often hide the true extent of outages, calling them “planned maintenance” or “short-term incidents” to avoid panic,” Exilenova+ notes.

So the OSINT community listed where exactly “planned work” was being carried out on the night of January 25: Murmansk, Severomorsk, Zakamsk, Belgorod and the region, Bryansk and the region, Orel, Taganrog, and the Rostov region.

Also, “local restriction schedules have been introduced” in temporarily occupied Alchevsk and Crimea. And even in Podolsk, Zaraysk, Khimki, Zhukovsky and Elektrostal near Moscow , “transformers cannot withstand the load” and therefore there is currently no electricity there.

What preceded

On January 21, a crater appeared on Gubkin Street in Belgorod. As it later turned out – although the local authorities, as always, are hiding it – it was a bomber from an aggressor state that “inadvertently” dropped a FAB-500 aerial bomb on its own city.

As OBOZ.UA reported , on the night of January 9, a number of strikes on Belgorod’s energy infrastructure were also recorded, after which the Russians complained of a complete blackout. It later became known that the strikes were carried out using HIMARS multiple launch rocket systems.

https://www.obozrevatel.com/ukr/novosti-rossii/belgorod-bryansk-ta-inshi-mista-rf-ohopili-bleknuti-scho-vidbuvaetsya.htm