Exclusive: This pizza box-sized equipment could be key to Ukraine keeping the lights on this winter

Staring down another frigid winter and desperate to keep the lights on, Ukraine’s power grid operator has surreptitiously imported custom-built equipment designed to withstand Russian electronic warfare attacks with the help of US officials, CNN has learned.

Engineers at US tech giant Cisco spent weeks building and stress-testing the new gear in a lab in Austin, Texas, and delivered a prototype to Ukraine in the spring with the help of a US Air Force plane carrying humanitarian aid, according to Cisco.

After Ukraine’s state-owned grid operator, Ukrenergo, quietly confirmed the new equipment worked despite Russian attacks on its GPS systems, Cisco shipped dozens of the pizza box-sized hardware kits worth an estimated $1 million to Ukraine, where they were installed across the country, Ukrenergo executives told CNN.

The new equipment, which has not been previously reported, could offer a crucial lifeline to Ukraine’s electricity grid, which remains a key target of Russian attacks as the Kremlin’s war enters its second full winter. Russian missile and drone strikes over the last two years have destroyed about 40% of the power substations and related equipment that Ukrenergo operates across the country, the grid operator told CNN.

In a rare cyberattack that has only just been made public, hackers connected to Russia’s military intelligence agency, the GRU, caused a power outage in Ukraine in October 2022, according to US experts.

“We are anticipating them to continue, especially this winter,” Illia Vitiuk, head of cybersecurity for the Ukrainian security service SBU, said of attempted Russian hacks on power plants.

The issue that Cisco aimed to help fix, however, is caused by Russian radio-jammers that interfere with the GPS systems Ukrenergo also relies on to manage the flow of power in Ukraine.

The stealthy…