Power plants, gas pipelines and nuclear power plants have increasingly come under Russian attack in the last few weeks before the approaching winter. While about 34 attacks were reported between February and September, it has been raining cruise missiles and kamikaze drones across the country almost daily since the beginning of this month. At least two hundred of these were fired mostly at power plants.

Hardly anything hits a population as hard as the destruction of the energy infrastructure. How will the 35 million Ukrainians who are still in the country survive this winter?

Svitlana Zalishchuck works at the state gas company Naftogaz, Ukraine’s largest oil and gas company. She says the Russians will continue to attack vital infrastructure until all power in Ukraine is lost.

“So far the Russians have been fairly successful in these attacks. They have thousands of missiles they can use to attack our infrastructure. They’re not modern precision missiles, but there are a lot of them. And in this case it’s more about quantity than quantity quality.”

Dmytro Sakharuk is a director of DTEK, the largest privately owned electricity company in Ukraine. He sees that Russia is consciously opting for infrastructure. “Russia’s main goal is to stop us from generating energy. Their second goal is to impede our flow of electricity. Before the attacks, almost any amount of electricity could be transported from all parts of Ukraine. Now this is only possible to a very limited extent. .”

But the greatest danger is heat loss, says Sacharuk. “When temperatures drop below zero, which happens every winter, the heat pipes freeze and burst. When we get energy again later, all the pipes in the whole country have to be replaced first. This is a real nightmare scenario.”

Zakharuq says more than 50 percent of Ukraine’s power grid has been partially or completely destroyed. Help from abroad is needed to fix this. “We’re asking if countries still have equipment, maybe in stock in their warehouses, or used equipment that we can fix.”

Countries in Eastern Europe in particular could help, says Sacharuk. “In Eastern Europe there are still many old power plants from the Soviet era that are very similar to our power plants. If old devices are still stored there, that could help us a lot.”

But he also asks for protection from the Russian missiles. “We can fix everything now, but the Russians will continue to attack.”

hard winter

In order to conserve energy stocks, Ukraine has already started implementing contingency plans for energy consumption. Residents were asked to be “particularly aware” of electricity between 7 a.m. and 11 a.m. Several cities have also decided to limit the use of electric public transport such as trolleybuses and reduce the frequency of subways. In the capital Kyiv, the energy supply has already been halved: only 600 to 800 megawatts are available to the entire capital, which usually consumes around 1000 to 12000 megawatts.

And the larger cities in particular could be hit hard this winter, says Sacharuk. “In our big cities, people live in multi-storey apartments, and heating is essential. Without light or electricity it will be a while. But without water, and therefore without heat, it is impossible to survive: winters in Ukraine are too extreme. If that happens, I fear a very large humanitarian crisis.”