Press
Russia has detailed information about the Ukrainian power grid from the Soviet era. Putin is using this in the Ukraine war. Now the Ukrainians are rebuilding their system.
Berlin/Düsseldorf – Suddenly it got dark. Again. At the end of June, Russian troops attacked Ukraine’s energy supply, this time causing power outages in many places in the Lviv and Zaporizhia regions. According to the Ukrainian government, this was the eighth wave of attacks on the energy infrastructure within three months.
Ukraine war: After attacks by Russian troops, power shortages threaten hospitals
This is always a hard blow for the civilian population, and hospitals are also threatened with energy shortages in Ukraine WarCompared to last year, the country can only produce half as much electricity as it did last year, according to reports from Kiev. Now the Ukrainians are building a completely new power grid to make it as difficult as possible for the attackers.
Germany is supporting Ukraine in this. Just a few weeks ago, the KfW development bank signed a grant agreement for 45 million euros with the Ukrainian state-owned energy supplier Ukrenergo on behalf of the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development. The Ukrainians want to use the money to repair damaged parts of the electricity network infrastructure and expand the network so that it is less vulnerable to attacks.
Putin has information about the Soviet-era power grid: “Russia is deliberately attacking sensitive areas”
“Russia still has precise information from the Soviet era about how Ukraine’s power grid is structured,” explained Federal Development Minister Svenja Schulze (SPD) on Tuesday at a press conference in the Düsseldorf state parliament. “This allows Russian troops to target sensitive areas in order to cause as much damage as possible.” In Zaporizhia, for example, nodes were bombed in order to disconnect hospitals from the grid.
Now the Ukrainians are relying on decentralized facilities such as wind farms to disrupt Vladimir Putin’s strategy. “A large field of wind turbines is much more difficult to destroy than a single, central power plant,” says Schulze.
The question of whether reconstruction in the middle of the war Wladimir Putin The question of whether this makes sense was recently discussed at the reconstruction conference in Berlin. Schulze made it clear: “People need electricity now.” If in doubt, this could be a decisive factor in the war when defending against Putin’s troops. “The Ukrainians don’t just need weapons. They are rebuilding their country bit by bit every day, and we are supporting them with resources and know-how.”
German municipalities help twin towns in the Ukraine war with power generators
Partnerships between German and Ukrainian municipalities could also help. The ministry has been promoting such cooperation since 2014, and it has intensified since the start of the Ukraine war in 2022. There are now 200 German-Ukrainian municipal partnerships. German municipalities are supporting this, for example by supplying power generators or fire engines and advising on long-term reconstruction strategies.
Criticism of CSU demand to send refugees back to Ukraine
Jochen Ott, chairman of the SPD parliamentary group in the NRW state parliament, meanwhile criticized recent statements from CSU circles on the treatment of Ukrainian refugees. CSU regional group leader Alexander Dobrindt recently called for war refugees to be sent back to Ukraine if they do not find work in Germany.
“Something like that is more than lacking in character,” said Ott. In NRW, there are clear agreements on direct aid in Ukraine and on the accommodation and care of refugees. “I assume that these CSU debates will not find any resonance in the black-green state government. That would really be a breach of everything we have agreed on together so far.”
#Ukraine #restructures #electricity #supply