Germany will provide an extra €100 million in aid to Ukraine this winter, as announced by German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock during her visit to Moldova on Tuesday, September 17.
Ahead of the ministerial conference in Chisinau, Baerbock highlighted that Russia is once again preparing for “winter war with the aim of making the lives of people in Ukraine as terrible as possible”.
Ukraine’s energy system is still recovering from nine large-scale Russian attacks and faces a capacity shortfall. Emergency and scheduled repairs at energy facilities remain ongoing.
Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal previously stated, that barring further attacks on energy infrastructure, Ukraine could manage the winter without widespread blackouts. However, intelligence suggests that Russia is preparing another series of massive strikes on Ukraine’s energy grid.
On September 10, Shmyhal told reporters that this winter is likely to be as challenging as the previous ones—if not the hardest yet. He added that predicting how long Ukrainians may be without electricity or whether there will be outages at all is difficult.
