Electric equipment is desperately needed to keep the country from freezing
on the battlefield have prompted it to attack Ukraine’s people. Since October 10th it has directed more than 200 cruise missiles and kamikaze drones at a crucial element of Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure: the electrical-power grid. And whereas Russia’s invasion has been badly planned, poorly executed and bereft of clear goals, its effort to turn off Ukraine’s lights appears competent and effective.
A second set of targets is the country’s power plants themselves. Those are bigger and harder to knock out, but as of last week at least 30% of the country’s power capacity had been damaged, according to UkrEnergo, the national-grid operator. Reducing capacity raises the risk that at peak demand the system could experience widespread blackouts and force some plants to shut down. In the worst case, says Mr Sakharuk, plants might lack the current needed to start up again.
To prevent this, power authorities are imposing rolling blackouts to keep demand safely below available supply. In important cities electricity is being turned off, neighbourhood by neighbourhood, for four hours at a time. Power companies have tried to set up websites to warn residents when the lights will go off, but sometimes blackouts are unpredictable. “They just cut the power, we don’t know when,” says Valera, who works at a bakery in Kyiv’s chic city centre.
More serious is the lack of equipment. Since the spring, Western power companies have been shipping to Ukraine transformers, circuit breakers, switches, generators, cable and other gear. Poland’sand 50 Hertz, and other firms from Finland, Lithuania, Portugal and America have all chipped in.