"The only sustainable way to protect Ukraine's energy system from Russian strikes is to decentralize production by building very small power plants."
This was stated by Volodymyr Kudritsky, the chairman of the national electricity company Ukrenergo, AFP reports.
Since late March, Russia has launched a campaign of strikes against Ukraine's energy system similar to that of the previous winter, when millions of Ukrainians were deprived of electricity and heating in freezing temperatures.
This new wave of attacks, even more intense than the previous winter, has "damaged a whole series of important infrastructures", in particular thermal and hydroelectric power plants, Volodymyr Kudrytsky told a news conference.
On 22 March, strikes caused massive power outages across Ukraine, plunging the country's second largest city, Kharkiv (east), into darkness, where Kudritsky said the situation remained "difficult" and restrictions on electricity consumption were still in place.
Since then, attacks by Russian missiles or suicide drones have been "a daily occurrence" with varying degrees of seriousness, he explained.
According to him, Russia has "for the first time" attacked a solar power plant in the Dnipropetrovsk region (central east), and Ukraine is using the energy produced by this type of installations to compensate for its losses caused by the recent attacks.
In the face of constant strikes, "it will be quite difficult to repair damaged power plants indefinitely," which were typically built in the 1960s or 1970s, Kudrycki noted.
For now, Ukraine is "very dependent on a small number" of large power plants, making it vulnerable to Russian attacks.
"The only sustainable way to protect the system is to decentralize generation capacity" by using small power plants powered by renewable energy and located around major cities. Instead of 15 or 20 large power plants, we will have to build hundreds of small ones," which Russia will find harder to destroy because of the limited number of missiles it has, he argues.
In a country whose budget is drained by military spending, the authorities are relying on "private investors" to build these small power plants, Vladimir Kudritsky said.
Ukraine, which has been forced to increase electricity imports because of recent strikes, also wants more air defense systems from its allies to better protect its basic infrastructure. / BGNES
