Ukraine facing most ‘difficult’ winter in history – minister
The coming winter will be the most difficult in Ukraine's modern history, Energy Minister German Galushchenko has warned. He predicted that the country's power generation will significantly deteriorate as winter approaches, RIA Novosti reported on Tuesday.
Ukraine’s power grid operator, Ukrenergo, warned earlier that the scale of damage to the country’s energy network is “extremely large,” while calling for energy rationing. Functioning power plants are already operating at maximum capacity, Galushchenko said.
On Monday, Russia launched a large-scale attack targeting multiple industrial sites across Ukraine. Galushchenko described the situation as “difficult” and confirmed that the grid operator had triggered emergency blackouts to deal with it.
Commenting on the Russian strikes on Monday, US President Joe Biden said the US is “surging energy equipment to Ukraine to repair its systems and strengthen the resilience of Ukraine’s energy grid.”
Prime Minister Denis Shmigal said the latest barrage affected 15 regions of Ukraine and urged Western arms donors to allow Kiev to use their weapons for strikes deep inside Russia.
Moscow has been attacking Ukrainian power plants since spring, responding to Kiev’s campaign of drone strikes on Russian oil refineries and storage depots. The stated goal was to cripple Ukrainian arms production and its capability to deploy new troops to the front line.
Last week, Galushchenko said that while Kiev plans to restore and build additional energy generation facilities, Ukrainian citizens must prepare for a challenging winter and look for alternative heating sources, including autonomous power generators and firewood.
Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky previously reported that up to 80% of the country’s energy capacity, including coal-fired power plants and hydroelectric power, has been damaged or destroyed amid the conflict with Russia.
