On New Year’s Eve, Andrii Touinda looked out of his Kyiv apartment window at Russian cruise missiles flying overhead and wondered if he would have to spend another night repairing a damaged power station to keep the Ukrainian capital’s lights on and warm.
“I have prepared a whole team behind my phone, they are Marvel superheroes,” said a maintenance engineer at DTEK, Ukraine’s largest private energy company. “Our job is to bring light to people, to do the impossible.”
Over the past three months, since Ukrainian counter-offensives pushed Russian ground forces to the northeast and south, Moscow has opened up a deadly second front: relentless cruise missile and drone fire aimed at disrupting Ukraine’s power grid and drowning millions of civilians. to that area. the darkness of the frozen winter.
General Valery Zaluzhnyi, the commander of Ukraine’s armed forces, warned in an interview with The Economist in December that the destruction of the power grid could damage public morale and Ukraine’s ability to continue fighting. A wave of powerful airstrikes on November 23, when Russia sent 70 cruise missiles, even caused a blackout in neighboring Moldova, which is connected to Ukraine’s network.
“The attack was planned and carried out not only by the Russian military but also by Russian energy specialists,” said Volodymyr Kudrytskiy, chief executive of Ukrenegro, Ukraine’s state energy company.
Russian engineers know Ukraine’s energy grid “like the back of their hands” because they were connected to the country’s system before last February’s invasion, Kudrytskiy said. But Ukrainian engineers now better understand Russian strategy and can take steps “to minimize the consequences” of the attack, he added.
Ukrainian officials say Russia is pursuing a systematic campaign, focusing on destroying transformers located at the main nodes of the power grid distribution system, rather than the power plants themselves.
The aim is to break the grid into isolated islands and prevent the flow of electricity between regions, energy experts say. Most of the country’s power generation capacity is in the west and passes through high voltage lines to reach the center and east.
“All equipment is located in the open air, so it is quite easy to press,” said Maxim Timchenko, chief executive of DTEK. “If there’s a direct hit, there’s no chance the equipment can be saved.”
Setting up the system during winter has become a race against time for Ukraine and its western allies. The first step is to protect 50 important sites with air defense systems supplied from the west, such as Nasams surface-to-air missiles.
The strategy is a trade-off, as resources can be used to protect front-line troops. Old world war two style approaches, such as using machine guns to shoot down selected drones in the night sky with searchlights, were also used. “This is a simple defense system but it can be effective against slow-flying drones,” a Ukrainian defense adviser said.
Another prong of Ukraine’s strategy is waiting for attacks and learning from the successful ones. Industry executives hold daily Zoom meetings with the energy ministry and other government partners to keep up with the fast-paced conflict.
To reduce the system’s vulnerability, a grace period of up to 60 minutes provided by Ukraine’s warning system was used to shut down the system with a temporary blackout, Timchenko said. If a missile gets through, “we adjust our systems and air defenses . . . so that we are more sustainable”.
The third dimension is repair. Most Ukrainian networks use the old Soviet system. It operates at a higher voltage than the EU, making it incompatible with many western equipment, which cannot be used to replace damaged equipment.
The worst weakness is the 750 kV transformers, which weigh up to 200 tons each. Although some replacements have been sourced from former communist countries such as Lithuania, most of the damage has to be rebuilt.
“During the first eight months of the war, Ukraine did not suffer because we had a large stake [spare] transformers, “said Kudrytskiy. “Now they are an urgent need.”
More than 40 percent of the country’s energy infrastructure has been damaged in the Russian attack. But despite the blackout, Ukrainian engineers have proven very adept at shunting power in the disabled section of the grid.
At night, a Kyiv restaurant that remains open pools light on a dark street. Some industrial users in the middle of the country, such as iron ore producer Ferrexpo, have even partially restarted production.
“I have been uber impressed at how the country has been able to keep the system running,” Denys Sakva, an energy analyst at Kyiv-based Dragon Capital, an investment management company, said.
However, after a mild December, the temperature drops sharply. On Friday, Ukraine asked civilians to save electricity. With three months until winter officially ends on April 1, the government said emergency blackouts could be reinstated.
Meanwhile, Moscow continues to adapt its strategy. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has warned Russia could use swarms of drones to “exhaust” Ukraine’s air defenses, and could also move launch sites to bypass established defense lines. Western intelligence services have warned Iran could supply Russia with ballistic missiles and other Shahed drones to replenish Moscow’s precision weaponry.
“The electric box is like a body: everything is interconnected and if one part is damaged it is felt everywhere,” said Touinda. “I’m not afraid, but it’s getting harder to deal with all the damage.”