More than a third of Ukraine’s hard-to-replace transmission centers have been damaged or destroyed, officials said.
Russia’s change of tactics worries Ukrainian and Western officials as temperatures begin to drop in Ukraine. They warn that the attacks could hurt civilians, create a new wave of refugees and further erode Ukraine’s war-torn economy. Many Ukrainian cities are heated from centralized power plants, which require both electricity and gas to operate, meaning attacks can be particularly devastating.
Western officials have condemned the attacks on infrastructure as a war crime, saying they aim to sow terror on the civilian population. Ukrainian officials said the operation was relentless and highly strategic, in contrast to the often poorly designed ground tactics of the Russian military.
“All the drones they use, missiles, everything is targeting the energy infrastructure,” Ukrainian Energy Minister German Galushchenko said in an interview. “There is some kind of roadmap for the soldiers, where to shoot. If they miss a day, they will bombard it again and again the next day.”
Defending against attacks also proved extremely difficult, and officials said there was little they could do to harden the system against attacks by Russia with long-range missiles and barrages of attack drones.
“The purpose of this is to create the most likely barriers to quick reconnection,” Galushchenko said. Said. “The bombardment of infrastructure every day brings us closer to bigger problems.”
Another goal is to greatly hamper Ukraine’s ability to support its troops on the front lines.
Ukraine’s backers in Europe and Asia have pledged to provide more powerful air defense systems and provide rapid equipment and other assistance to help rebuild critical infrastructure. However, many air defense systems are complex to use, require extensive training, and are slow to achieve.
Previously, when power plants or transmission lines were hacked, Ukrainian energy officials were able to reroute electricity around the problem, using their country’s thick Soviet network and post-Soviet energy infrastructure to circumvent the problems. But that resilience is quickly eroding, officials said.
And as long as Russia can attack the same targets repeatedly, repairing damaged infrastructure is pointless. Most substations and transformers need to sit above ground, and many need to be clear of obstacles in their environment, making them easy targets.
“The rules of the game are not fair,” said Volodymyr Kudrytskyi, CEO of the country’s main network operator Ukrenergo. “It’s much quicker and easier to launch a missile and destroy the equipment or object than it is to regenerate it.”
Replacing custom transformers and other substation infrastructure is particularly difficult because they often have to be custom built and this process can take months, experts said.
Kudrytskyi and others said they saw the ghostly presence of Russian energy counterparts in the decisions behind the coup, as if people like them were plotting the strategy. The networks of Russia and Ukraine are technically similar as they were part of the same country until 1991, and Soviet-era infrastructure maps can still provide a roadmap to destruction.
“Obviously they are targeting substations and power plants that are very important to certain regions, specific regions, or the energy system as a whole,” Kudrytskyi said. Said. “They know where to attack to inflict as much damage as possible. Because their target is terrorism. Their aim is to disconnect as many people as possible from the grid to create this panic.”
For now, 90 percent of Ukrainians have regained their strength within a day after an attack, Kudrytskyi said. “The problem,” he said, “is that the system’s security buffer is running low. At the current rate of destruction, there is no such stock that can last for months or years.”
Authorities began asking residents to stop using power-hungry devices and implemented planned power cuts of several hours at a time in Kiev and cities around the country.
Many local governments have switched from electric trolleybuses to diesel powered trolleybuses as one of several measures they have taken to conserve electricity. Planned outages help alleviate the load on the grid and give energy companies valuable hours to confuse repair teams and reroute electricity flows in undamaged portions of transmission networks.
“My personal assessment is that they will not be able to create a complete blackout in the country,” said Olena Pavlenko, head of DiXi Group, a Kyiv-based energy consulting firm. “There will still be the possibility of having electricity supplies in all regions. But they will create a situation where there are longer power outages in cities.”
The attacks began to create a new account among the Ukrainians.
For those in the east and center of the country, many of whom have just returned home after spending months abroad or in the west of the country, this raises the possibility that they may need to flee again. Even for those considering staying, discussions have begun on what needs to be done to prepare for a winter without heat and electricity for potentially long periods of time.
Adding that his own apartment in Kiev was without electricity for four hours that afternoon, Pavlenko said, “When you have to be without electricity, you always feel like you’re in danger.” “You can’t live like you did before. It’s terrorizing all regions.”
In a recent news report, residents were advised to place emergency packages in elevators in case they find themselves stuck between floors during a power outage. In an apartment, the contents of a flashlight, water, cookies, as well as two adult diapers and a mild sedative.
At the bottom of the list of contents of the package, a request was written: “Please do not use the contents if you do not need them, change what you use”.
Ukraine’s electricity generation capacity fell in the first weeks of the war after Russia seized the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, Europe’s largest atomic power plant. But the demands for power are also much lower than in peacetime, as much of the country’s industry is left idle by the conflict.
Ukraine can still generate enough electricity for its needs – and until just two weeks ago, it was actually exporting the surplus to its European neighbors. However, the ability to transport electricity from power plants, many of which are located in the north and west of Ukraine, to where it is needed, close to the front lines in the south and east, is rapidly declining.
“The main goal of the Russian attack is to create a situation in which the Ukrainian system cannot work together,” said Oleksandr Kharchenko, managing director of the Kyiv-based think tank Energy Industry Research Center. “They want to break it down into several parts. We can see this plan clearly.”
Another goal – after Russia entered the battlefields at the front and withdrew from the southern city of Kherson and other areas – to undermine the Ukrainian army from the rear.
“This is a completely different way for Russia to target infrastructure right now,” said Artur Lorkowski, director of the Vienna-based Energy Community Secretariat, an international organization affiliated with the European Union that coordinates efforts to divert spare parts and infrastructure assistance. to Kiev. “That’s something about the future that scares me.”
Targeting the energy grid could lead to civilian suffering, which outweighs the already heavy toll of the war, which entered its ninth month on Monday, Lorkowski said.
“I would like to be wrong, but if the intensity of the bombardment is held back by the Russians, you can expect a really tough winter,” Lorkowski said in a phone call from the Polish-Ukrainian border. visit to Kyiv focused on relief efforts. “They are trying to push people into a state of crisis with limited or no access to electricity and heat during the winter months.”
Attacks on energy infrastructure have prompted calls for Allies to seek help with both air defense and power system spares.
Biden said he tried the administration. “We are working with the Ukrainians and regional and allied partners to see what can be done to support some alternative energy sources for them as winter approaches,” said John Kirby, spokesman for the National Security Council. He added that the United States is working hard to enable the Ukrainians to “improve their air defense capabilities”.
Poland recently submitted to the European Commission a list of Ukraine’s most pressing infrastructure needs.
The list, prepared in conjunction with Kyiv, outlines the need for items such as mobile cranes, vehicles for transporting reinforced concrete poles, miles of electric cables and more than a dozen types of transformers, as well as submersible pumps, surge limiters and chain saws. Among other things.
A Polish diplomat said that diplomats from EU member states were briefed about the letter, on condition that his name be not disclosed to discuss the ongoing negotiations. “More and more member states are understanding the situation and I think they want to help,” the diplomat said.
The diplomat said that some of the needed materials can be obtained from the European Union, while other materials may need to be ordered from elsewhere, potentially with financial support from EU countries. Even before the last Russian attacks, EU countries were donating generators, repair kits and transformers.
Kudrytskyi, CEO of Ukrenergo, said he felt he was in a race to make repairs faster than Russian bombing could destroy his business. “This is a very dangerous situation,” he said, “and we don’t know their destruction capabilities.”
Stern reported from Kiev and Rauhaula from Brussels. Beatriz Ríos in Brussels contributed to this report.