CNN
—
What Russia cannot win on the battlefield is trying to win by throwing the cities of Ukraine into darkness and cold as the long winter begins.
As a result, a fierce battle of attrition unfolds. A Russian missile barrage crosses Ukraine, and Ukrainian power engineers work for days in freezing temperatures to restore power.
Monday saw the largest wave of missile attacks since 23 November. Ukrenergo, Ukraine’s state-run power plant, said about 40% of its normal power supply went offline at some point in October.
This has come to be known as the power shortage, which fluctuates depending on the missile’s impact.
Kirilo Tymoshenko, chief of staff to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, told CNN, “Since October, what the Ukrainian energy system has gone through is like no other energy system in the world. No,’ he said.
Volodymyr Kudritsky, CEO of state-owned power company Uklenergo, says the problem is not generating electricity, but getting it to people.
“The enemy is attacking the most critical facilities and critical elements of the substation that ensure power output and transmission,” Kudritsky told CNN.
Russians are targeting the most vulnerable parts of the system. “The nature of the attack indicates that the Russian missiles were commanded by Russian power engineers,” Tymoshenko said.
This is partly because until this year Ukraine was part of the same energy network as Russia and Belarus. Russian engineers knew the Ukrainian network perfectly.
The main targets are high voltage power lines, substations and distribution networks.
Joseph Mykut, director of the Energy Security and Climate Change Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said: Blackouts to balance the grid.
“Attacks on high-voltage substations are particularly damaging because they are critical to the operation of the grid and difficult to repair.”
Ukraine is now scouring the globe to find compatible parts and make repairs. Public morale is being tested by blackouts lasting more than 12 hours a day. If the blackout continues, another wave of Ukrainian civilians will flee west, threatening Poland and other neighboring countries.
I can see a glimmer of hope. Ukrainian air defense systems have improved their ability to repel Russian cruise missiles, often with newly arrived Western equipment. Ukraine said it had removed about 60 of her 70 missiles launched on Monday. A video has emerged of a German-made Gepard anti-aircraft missile being intercepted.
However, only a dozen Russian missiles hit key targets and wreak havoc. According to Ukrenergo, 15 gigawatts of Ukrainian power capacity have been extracted, compared to 56 gigawatts (GW) of power capacity before the war.
Power engineers are gradually patching the system, and by this week the power shortage had been reduced by 19%. However, the recovery is tenuous.
“Ukrainians will most likely have to endure a blackout at least until the end of March,” said Sergei Kovalenko, CEO of the power company YASNO.
Some people in Kyiv are ready to retreat to their rural dachas, where at least wood-burning stoves provide warmth, he told CNN.
Aware of the impact on Ukraine’s morale, Western governments are ramping up aid in the form of transformers, thousands of generators and other equipment.
The United States is mobilizing allies in the G7 group to focus on a multi-layered approach to maintaining lighting, heat and water. Washington has already provided more than $100 million for everything from circuit breakers to lightning arresters and generators that are now reaching Ukraine.
The European Union ships emergency equipment such as welding electrodes and circuit breakers. Ukraine Energy Assistance Fund shipped 37 shipments from 20 countries. A further 47 deliveries are planned.
Ukrenergo CEO Kudrytskyi has compiled a list of countries to which equipment has been sent, including Poland, Germany, Italy, Finland and Lithuania.
But according to Joseph Majkut of CSIS, the Ukrainian power grid also requires bespoke specialized equipment. One example is a high voltage (750kV) system that transfers power from a nuclear power plant to other parts of the grid.
“We don’t have enough facilities to allow for complete and permanent repair of power grids. ‘” Miket told CNN. It also weighs up to 250 tons.
Most of Europe operates on low voltage and many important items have to be specially manufactured to meet Ukraine’s needs. Tymoshenko told his CNN that he hopes South Korea will become a promising source of compatible equipment, although some will take him six to nine months to create.
Meanwhile, Kudrytskyi said Ukrainian engineers are doing patchwork repairs, installing “used equipment that often does not meet the full technical specifications of the grid, but which grid engineers can temporarily implement.” .
However, he warned that the company was running out of equipment.
“Uklenergo had a large stock of other equipment for emergency recovery work, but due to the scale of the damage, it has been exhausted.”
There are some short term options. As of early December, USAID has provided 2,200 of his generators to communities across the country. Hundreds more are being imported from Europe, and the mobile boiler house could provide heat to 7 million civilians by the end of this winter, the US State Department said.
Generators help keep critical services running, such as hospitals, sewage treatment plants, and housing for vulnerable people. But Kudrytskyi said they are “a temporary alternative. No type of power plant can replace power generation.”
They also need a lot of fuel, which was sometimes in short supply during the conflict.
In the long term, Ukraine aims to integrate into the European power grid. Tymoshenko told his CNN that the Ukrainian power system has been part of the continental network since March after synchronizing the system. This facilitates the trading of electricity.
“Of course, this will encourage further technical development of the power system after the victory,” he says.
That synchronization is already paying off. Part of the power going to Kyiv or Odessa goes through Europe and back to Ukraine in order to stabilize the Ukrainian grid.
The other half of the equation is better anti-missile defense. With the S-300 long-range surface-to-air missile system and, more recently, Germany’s advanced IRIS-T and his NASAMS in the United States, Ukrainian air defenses have increased their ability to intercept Russian cruise missiles and Iranian drones. doing.
Ukrainian military statistics show Ukrainian air defenses destroyed just over half of the cruise missiles fired in October. That percentage is now over two-thirds, and Ukrainians believe the Russians are running out of more accurate systems.
Last month, the Pentagon also authorized the deployment of HAWK missiles (the launchers come from Spain) and four Avenger air defense systems. Seeking. U.S. officials are timid about the prospect and say it is not currently being discussed.
With engineers working around the clock, Kudrytskyi says: But then Russian missiles and drones will again fly into Ukrainian energy installations and destroy everything that has been repaired. ”
Some Ukrenergo facilities have been targeted eight times and patched eight times, he said.
Tymoshenko told CNN: And we recognize that this winter will require courage and perseverance from each of us.
However, he said he was confident Ukraine would win and that the ultimate goal was “better rebuilding” and faster rebuilding.
