Half of Ukraine's Power Grid Crippled by Recent Russian Attacks

Seven recent Russian attacks on Ukraine's energy infrastructure have resulted in the loss of approximately 9 gigawatts of generating capacity, according to the head of the state-owned power grid operator Ukrenergo.

This represents half of the country's total power generation capacity and is equivalent to the energy consumption of the Netherlands for three months or the combined consumption of Slovakia and the Baltic states.

Volodymyr Kudrytskyi, the head of Ukrenergo's board, stated that Ukraine needs to urgently start building distributed generation facilities in preparation for this and next winter. Decentralizing smaller power plants will make Ukraine's energy system more resilient to Russian attacks, according to Kudrytskyi.

"Unfortunately, we have to deal with the realities that these attacks are likely to continue. And we need to be ready, we need to restore as much generation as possible before winter. We need to ask for additional air defense to protect what we are restoring. But we also need to deploy new generating capacity to make sure that if the Russians do these attacks again, they won't be able to concentrate on 10 or 15 large power plants, but will have to deal with a huge number of small ones," Kudrytskyi said.

Overnight on June 22, Russian forces launched a series of missile and drone strikes targeting critical energy infrastructure and residential areas across multiple Ukrainian regions, continuing its attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure. The Ministry of Energy of Ukraine has confirmed that these strikes caused damage to energy transmission systems in the southern and western regions, resulting in equipment disruptions.

Ukraine is currently implementing power restrictions in multiple regions, facing prolonged power outages in winter seasons.