Russia aims to destroy Ukraine’s energy generation capacity

After a first campaign of attacks on transmission infrastructures in 2022-23, Russia has recently started focusing its airstrikes on electricity-generating thermal and hydro powerplants, causing an electricity deficit that may take years to make up for.

Ukrainian officials say the damage Moscow has inflicted since March, while not as widespread as the mass attacks on infrastructure in the winter of 2022-23, has been worse due to the apparent aim of causing irreparable permanent destruction.

Last year, Russia mostly hit transmission networks, while this year, it is destroying the production facilities, which are much more expensive and take years to rebuild or repair.

Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said that since March, Ukraine has lost more than six gigawatts of its power grid capacity and  80% of thermal capacities. This has resulted in cuts in electricity, heating, and even running water for two million Ukrainians, according to a parliamentary estimate.

Kharkiv’s entire thermal and electricity generation capacities were destroyed, including a combined heat and power plant (CHPP-5) that covered 55% of the city’s electricity needs and 35% of the heating, leaving 240,000 people without electricity three weeks later. 

Oleksandr Minkovych, head of the CHPP-5, gave up on repairing windows and ceilings broken by the dozens of Russian missiles and drone attacks.

Last month, five missiles out of 15 fell on the facility, rendering it “unusable for months to come, maybe a year”, Minkovych told Euractiv.

“The Russians are trying to leave the whole region without power,” he said, standing next to the giant hole left inside the burn-out plant. 

The increase in attacks comes as Ukraine’s Western allies struggle to supply Kyiv with sufficient air defences. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told EU leaders on Thursday (18 April) that he cannot “rule out that the infrastructure of our other nuclear power plants and distribution networks are also under threat from Russian terror”.

Attacks on ‘manoeuver capacity’

Before Russia’s full-scale invasion, nuclear power plants generated 55% of Ukraine’s electricity consumption.

In the last three weeks, Moscow has been destroying several gas or coal thermal or combined thermal and heat (CHP) power plants and four large hydropower stations, which account for a less critical share of the country’s overall consumption but are crucial for the stability of the whole system. 

Overall, according to a joint UNDP and World Bank assessment from 5 April, Ukraine’s electricity generating capacity has been reduced by 61% due to damages from Russian attacks since 2022, but demand has also fallen by about 40% because of a drop in the population and business activity. 

The resulting decline in power generation has mainly been due to nuclear power, with the Zaporizhzhia power plant in Russian hands, but coal and gas-fired generation have also decreased. 

“These objects serve as Ukraine’s manoeuvring capacity. When Russians attack these flexible capacities, it causes emergency blackouts,” said Oleksandr Kharchenko, director of the country’s Energy Industry Research Center (EIR).

The report estimates the preliminary cost of compensating the capacities lost due to the recent missile strikes at €6.2 billion over a 3-5-year perspective, assuming that hydrogeneration capacities will be restored in up to three years and thermal generation capacities will be replaced by decentralised gas piston and gas turbine generation.

In 2022, the Ukrainian power plants’ available capacity dropped from 36 GW to 13.9 GW. About 10 GW of installed capacity remains in the territories under temporary control of Russian forces and is not delivered to the grid, including the 6 GW Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the biggest in Europe

Experts warn that the loss of thermal power plants, if not restored in time, will cause a shutdown for millions of consumers nationwide during the July season and next winter.

Since February 2022, Russia has also damaged or destroyed 41 out of 94 high-voltage transformation substations with drones or missiles, crucial for the transmission network, according to the UNDP assessment. Half of them were targeted more than once. 

According to documents from the Reconstruction Agency that Euractiv had access to, after the winter of 2022-2023, most were covered with concrete blocks, sand fortifications, and anti-drone nets provided by international partners, but these could hardly stop ballistic missiles. 

Kharchenko noted that thanks to the procurement of backup transformers and equipment, substations are more accessible for repair. Ukrainian engineers complete the Sisyphean task of fixing them daily despite repeated shelling. 

However, turbines or boilers from power plants cost millions of euros and can take up to two years to be custom-built, according to Minkovych, whose team is still assessing damages and cleaning debris in Kharkiv’s CHPP-5. 

Risk for next winter 

Despite the recent attacks, most of Ukraine’s population still has power, thanks to imports from the EU through the new integrated system launched in March 2022. 

According to Ukrainian officials, the situation is under control thanks to good weather and the early end of the heating season. However, Kyiv called on the population to decrease consumption at peak hours and expect blackouts in the upcoming weeks.

The national transmission system operator, Ukrenergo, warned the situation in Kharkiv is the most critical. 

“The city can’t survive in winter without the CHPP-5”, mayor Ihor Terekhov told Euractiv. “We need financial aid to restore electricity capacities, but mostly we need more air defence.”

[Edited by Alexandra Brzozowski/Zoran Radosavljevic]

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