FLASH
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Ukrainian authorities are trying to assess the damage caused by one of the biggest Russian airstrikes of the war earlier this week, which targeted energy infrastructure across the country, further damaging a sector targeted by Moscow several times in the spring. .
While much of Ukraine is still reeling from a very hot summer, this week's strikes have brought into focus concerns about the harsh cold months ahead. " This winter will be tough, that's for sure," said Nataliia Shapoval, head of the Institute of the Kyiv School of Economics.
Monday's attack, which came during the morning rush hour, involved more than 100 missiles and more than 100 drones targeting energy infrastructure across the country, from the east near the front lines to the far west near the border with EU countries.
While attacks in the spring targeted generating capacity, Monday's attacks focused primarily on distribution infrastructure, such as electricity substations. They led to emergency blackouts across the country, which have scaled back to planned blackouts affecting Kiev and many other cities.
Many estimates suggest that even before this week's attacks, Russia had destroyed about half of Ukraine's energy capacity. Repair work has continued over the summer, but as Kiev continues to seek increased air defense support from Western allies, fears are that further attacks could turn a difficult situation into a catastrophic one.
"It is not easy to improve the situation, but additional attacks could make it worse," said Andrian Prokip, a Kiev-based energy expert with the Kennan Institute in Washington, DC.
"Even in the best case scenario there will be planned outages. How they look will depend on the temperature. If we have -5 [degrees Celsius], a schedule of seven hours off, two hours on, can be expected," he said.
At a June conference in Berlin, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Russia had destroyed 80% of Ukraine's thermal power output and a third of its hydro output. On Tuesday, he declined to elaborate on what further damage Monday's strikes had caused.
“I don't really like energy PR. It's not very helpful when the enemy knows what damage they've done. Let the information about the state of our energy facilities and what we are currently doing there be kept quiet," he said.
"It was a big blow and the audit is ongoing," Mykhailo Podolyak, an aide to Zelenskiy, told the Guardian in Kiev. "We know what is needed: repair work, and in parallel, more support with air defense," he said.
The Shapoval Institute estimates that since the full-scale invasion began, Russian attacks on energy infrastructure have caused $16 billion in damage, as well as $40 billion in lost revenue.
The country is definitely better prepared for winter now than at the beginning of the war. Hospitals, critical infrastructure and many businesses have generating capacity. In Kiev, life continued almost as normal during long power outages this week, with small generators running outside cafes, restaurants and other businesses.
But the frequent power outages expected during the winter are sure to have a number of knock-on effects, starting with affecting the elderly and those with mobility problems living in high-rise buildings who will be unable to use elevators if the building does not have a generator. Sustained power outages could be catastrophic for heavy industry in the country's east, which has so far proved remarkably resilient despite more than two years of full-scale war.
In June, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Brussels plans to fund the development of small-scale generators across the country. "The goal is to help decentralize the energy system and thereby increase resilience," she said.
The renewed focus on energy comes after Ukraine's surprise incursion into Russia's Kursk region earlier this month, with Kiev now controlling a swath of Russian territory and changing the dynamic on the battlefield, even as Ukrainian forces remain standing in the eastern region of Donbass.
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