Verification within Meta’s Third-Party Fact-Checking Program
Russian Telegram channels are spreading what they claim to be a satellite image of Ukraine during a blackout in 2025, showing the country completely in darkness. The photo was allegedly published by journalists in response to a statement by MP Oleksii Kucherenko: “There are no blackouts in Ukraine. Claims that the country is in blackouts are speculation.”
However, this is not true. This photo was taken in 2022, not in 2025. Oleksii Kucherenko did not deny the difficult state of the energy system, but merely explained the difference between blackouts and stabilization outages. 
Screenshot of the post
On his Facebook page, MP Oleksii Kucherenko indeed commented on manipulations surrounding Ukraine’s energy system. In his post, he noted that the November 2025 electricity outages were not blackouts but planned or emergency restrictions caused by damage to energy facilities and a shortage of generation capacity. Instead, he gave the following definition of a blackout: “an emergency, spontaneous, and uncontrolled collapse of the energy system into ‘islands.’” The MP emphasized that so far, a blackout has occurred only once — on November 23, 2022. 
Screenshot of the post
Using reverse image search on Google, we found that no Ukrainian media outlet published this satellite image in response to Kucherenko’s statement.
This image was taken using the NASA Worldview service on the night of November 23–24, 2022, during a blackout caused by a nighttime massive shelling by the Russian Federation. At that time, CHP plants, TPPs, and electrical substations in Kyiv, Kyiv Oblast, Vinnytsia Oblast, Lviv Oblast, and Zaporizhzhia Oblast were damaged. 
Satellite image of the blackout in Ukraine on the night of November 23–24, 2022. Source: NASA Worldview
NASA Worldview is an online system that allows users to quickly view satellite images of Earth. It allows users to enable various layers — daytime, nighttime, infrared, cloud cover, fires — to track weather, nighttime lighting, and blackout areas in real time and using archival data.
We compared satellite images from the night of November 23–24, 2022, and November 14–15, 2025. It is noticeable that on the night of November 15, 2025, when hourly outage schedules were in effect, there were more illuminated areas across Ukraine than during the 2022 blackout. 
Top — a NASA Worldview image from the night of November 23–24, 2022; bottom — a NASA Worldview image from the night of November 14–15, 2025
In addition, these images may not reflect the actual situation with electricity — they may have been taken during curfew hours, when street lighting is significantly restricted, even without outage schedules. During martial law, light masking is applied to conceal populated areas and infrastructure from observation in the dark hours of the day.
Attention
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