Ukrainian Electricity Company Ensures Its System Will Not Experience Collapse Despite Weeks of Russian Bombardment

JAKARTA - Head of Ukraine's national power grid company Ukrenergo Volodymyr Kudrytskyi said on Monday that Russia's recent attacks had caused significant damage to the country's electric power system, but that it was unlikely to result in total destruction.

Since March 22, Russian troops have almost daily attacked Ukraine's thermal and hydroelectric power plants and main grids, causing power outages in many regions of the country.

"Their (Russia's) goal is to cause power outages in several large Ukrainian cities, and our goal is to prevent it," Kudrytskyi told Reuters in an interview, as quoted on April 2.

Meanwhile, the region's largest private energy company, DTEK, said the attack damaged five of its six power plants, losing 80 percent of its capacity.

DTEK, which supplies about a quarter of the country's needs, has seen its thermal power plants and other facilities repeatedly hit by Russian missiles, drones, and artillery attacks in more than two years of war.

The missile attacks also significantly damaged Ukraine's largest hydroelectric power plant in Zaporizhzhia, as well as the Kaniv and Dnister stations.

It is known that most of Ukraine's electricity is generated by three nuclear power plants. However, thermal and hydroelectric power generation is key to balancing the system during consumption peaks.

"The biggest concern at the moment is the condition of electricity production, the part that balances the system, hydroelectric and thermal power plants. The scale of damage that DTEK refers to is clearly a global level of damage (large scale)," said Kudrytskyi.

Nevertheless, he said his country's energy system would not collapse.

"We are certainly not one step away from collapse. Collapse is the uncontrolled shutdown of most or all of the electricity system. This has not happened and will not happen, we consider this scenario unlikely to happen," he explained.

Kudrytskyi added that Ukraine may experience "local problems" in certain regions, such as in the city of Kharkiv in the east of the country or in Odesa in the south.

The energy system of the Soviet Union, and later Ukraine, was traditionally based on large power plants. However, such facilities are very difficult to protect against missile attacks.

"First of all, we need to think about our generation mix and we need to think about how to protect our generation assets from (air) attacks," Kudrytskyi said.

This is only possible if Ukraine builds hundreds of small power plants across the country.

"This process needs to start immediately," he stressed.