Amid Russian Attacks, Ukraine Seeks New Ways to Power Its Cities
With Russia intensifying airstrikes on Ukraine’s power grid over the past month, darkness once again engulfs Ukrainian cities at night.In Kyiv, residents rely on cellphone flashlights to navigate unlit streets.
To walk their dogs, they use glow sticks doubling as makeshift collars.Ukraine has so far weathered the effects of three major Russian strikes over the past month by cutting street lighting and imposing intermittent shutdowns to ease pressure on the power grid.But two years of attacks on power plants and substations have left the country’s energy network on the verge of collapse, experts say.The United Nations has warned that power outages could last up to 18 hours a day this winter, “leaving civilians without the electricity they need to power homes, run water pumps and allow children to study online.”That has forced the Ukrainian authorities to turn to unconventional measures to try to avert an energy crisis.
It is bringing an entire aging Lithuanian power plant to Ukraine to scavenge parts for the damaged grid; has moved to lease floating power plants from Turkey; and has even requested a U.N.presence at critical substations, hoping to deter Russian attacks.“We are doing everything possible,” Viktoriya Hryb, the head of the Ukrainian Parliament’s subcommittee on energy security, said in a recent interview in Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital.Still, Ms.
Hryb and other Ukrainian officials admitted that these measures would not be enough to prevent blackouts.In some cases, they may not even be ready before year’s end, when subzero temperatures drive up electricity consumption.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.
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