“Russia will never achieve its goal of plunging Ukraine into total darkness,” a spokeswoman for Ukrainian private energy operator DTEK told British outlet Sky News. “With each attack, electrical engineers are getting braver and more creative in finding solutions to keep the system running,” she said.
But these quick jobsite fixes show their limits. Satellite images of kyiv at night, provided by NASA to Sky News, show light levels in Ukraine’s urban areas have halved since October, leaving millions of Ukrainians without electricity, or heating, without light, as winter arrives and its temperatures below zero.
Since the Crimean bridge attack in October, Russia has increased its missile barrages against Ukraine’s civilian energy infrastructure. Thus, all power, gas and coal plants were damaged, as well as 40% of the high voltage network, according to the prime minister. In mid-December, Russian President Vladimir Putin also assured that he intended to continue his attacks against the country’s energy infrastructure.
dark residential areas
Sky News, which obtained these images, focused on the city of Kyiv. The first high-definition image provided by the US space agency before the start of the war, in January 2022. In this one, we can see Kyiv glowing brightly.
Then, in two other more recent images (dating from November 2022), we see the capital go largely dark. Only a few streets in the city center (around Maidan Square) still seem relatively well lit. In the rest of the city, only a few streets here and there have lights.
“Weather conditions slow down repairs”
Some residential areas such as Troieschyna, northeast of the city, are almost completely blacked out, as national operators have chosen to keep power in the center of the capital as a priority.
These NASA images reveal that since the first wave of attacks in early October, some infrastructure has been repaired and partially restored by Ukrainian services. However, the most recent attacks appear to have brought the country’s energy system to the brink of collapse. end of november, six million homes, for example, were left without electricity for several days, according to President Volodymyr Zelensky.
“The situation is further complicated by weather conditions that are delaying the repair work,” Volodymyr Koudritskiï, head of national operator Ukrenergo, said in mid-December.
NASA images also show that several medium-sized Ukrainian cities have seen their lights cut in half. Images that even the energy infrastructure of cities like Lyiv, but far from the front line, have been deliberately targeted. In Kherson, the Ukrainian energy infrastructure was “virtually destroyed” during the withdrawal of Russian forces on December 9 and the situation is “complicated” in Odessa, the target of the attacks.
Source: BFM TV
