not too many get married Ukrainians these days. The few that do are usually soldiers, ready to declare their eternal love before getting lost in the muddy trenches at the front. That has made the business of the Mukhin couple reel like a ship adrift. The war it is rapidly leaving them destitute. The wedding dress store they had in the center of Kharkiv (northeast) was destroyed by the russian bombs and in that of Dnipro (center) with luck two clients a week enter. With hardly any income since the pandemonium began, the couple now lives among the lonely dresses in their store. They only turn on the lights when someone comes in. Or put another way, they live halfway between gloom and darkness.
“We are very concerned about the winter because here makes a tremendous cold. The electricity has been triggered and, if we do not have incomeit will be very difficult to pay the bills“, He says Andrey Mukhin pointing to the electric radiators of the store. They have no plan B other than throwing blankets and lining the shop window with plastic. Her anxiety is shared by legions of Ukrainians, in a country where almost five million jobs have flown by the war, according to data from the World Labor Organization. But the leaky pockets of the average worker are only one factor in the equation. Last monday Russia launched the largest attack to date against the country’s energy infrastructure in retaliation -according to Vladimir Putin– for the blowing up of a section of the strategic Kerch bridge in Crimea. A first salvo of missiles that has continued more sporadically during the week.
kyiv does not give specific details of the type of installations attacked, but it has said that they were hit in a dozen regionsin addition to the capital, which ended up damaging a 30% of your energy system. Tens of thousands of people were left without electricity, although the supply had been almost completely restored on Thursday, according to the authorities. “Not everything is repaired. In Krivyi Rih they attacked a electrical substation. That takes time. What we did was raise new lines of transmission to return electricity to homes while the substation is being repaired. Our brigades did not even sleep,” the director of Dtek Grids in Dnipro tells EL PERIÓDICO, Andrey Tereshchukone of the largest distribution companies in the country.
The Ukrainian government is convinced that Monday’s destruction is just an appetizer of what is to come. “It is important to understand that Russian terrorists will try to use the cold as a weapon“, his prime minister said on Wednesday, Denys Shmyhal. “They think that by leaving Ukrainians without power for hours we will give up, but that’s not going to happen.” Before the pandemic, Ukraine Produced nearly twice the electricity that he consumed, with his four nuclear power plants and various thermal as the main source of generation. The surplus was exported to European Uniona flow that has been temporarily halted since this week’s attack.
decentralized system
“The ukrainian energy system is very decentralized Y diversified“, says the former deputy and founder of the Ukrainian Sustainable Fund, Nataliya Katser-Buchkovska. “The regions have their own production, so it’s not enough for them to knock down one substation to shut down the rest.” The authorities have prescribed saving measures to the population, as reduce the consumption in the morning and evening rush hours so as not to overload the system or fix the heating between 16 and 18 degreesfour fewer than usual, which guarantees at least one severe wintereven behind closed doors. Knowing that the kremlin will strike again, everyone who can is looking for their own alternatives, from generators a car batteries to be able to recharge at least the mobile.
Gas is more of a concern than electricity, which feeds the heating in the massive soviet apartment blocks that continue to dominate the landscape in many cities. Ukraine stopped importing gas in Russian after the first blow from Moscow to dismember their territory in 2014. Near the 60% of what you consume It is own production; the rest comes from the EU at market prices. “At the moment, we have enough gaspartly because the domestic consumption has decreased by 40% due to the exodus of refugees and the destruction of part of the industry,” says Katser-Buchkovska. “We would be much better off if we could buy 4 or 5 bcm (billion cubic meters) more, but the price has skyrocketed so much that Ukraine doesn’t you can afford it.”
Additional gas reserves
Related news
kyiv is seeking financing from its allies to buy more gas, given that Russia could attack its deposits or that almost half of the production comes from the province of Kharkiv, close to the Russian border and only recently recaptured by Ukrainian forces. Without additional imports, said the director of the state gas company Yuri Vitrenko“there will be supply cuts in large areas of Ukraine”.
And the result of all this, in a country where average winter temperature around 10 degrees below zero, could move outside the Ukrainian borders. “If there is a lack of gas or electricity this winter, there will be another wave of refugees towards Europe. Up to 15 million people could be affected by the energy crisisone more of the weapons that Putin is using to increase the burden that European countries are already bearing, “says Katser-Buchkovska. The alternative to prevent it, she adds, is to shield the Ukrainian skies with the anti missile systems What is the government asking for? Volodymyr Zelensky.