The Ukrainian energy ministry said that Russia’s mass missile strike on heat generation and electrical substations on Monday forced Ukraine to stop exporting electricity to the European Union in order to stabilise its own grid.
The ministry underlined that Ukrainian electricity, exported to the EU after the electricity grids of Ukraine and Moldova have been successfully synchronised with the Continental European Grid helped Europe replace Russian gas and supported the stability of the European energy system.
The ministry reminded that even after the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant, which has been under Russian occupation for more than seven months, was shut down, Ukraine fulfilled its obligations to its European partners for electricity export.
The Ukrainian Energy Minister Herman Galushchenko warned that Russia is destroying the country’s energy system to eliminate the possibility of exporting electricity from Ukraine. He informed the EU’s Commissioner for Energy Kadri Simson about the consequences of the massive Russian attack on the energy infrastructure noting that this was already the second attack this fall, the first attempt took place a month ago, on 11 September. Then power supply was restored to almost all affected consumers in a few hours.
“Yesterday’s attack was much more powerful. Currently, there are still disconnected consumers in the Sumy and Ternopil regions. At the same time, electricity supply, which was interrupted due to yesterday’s shelling, has been fully restored in Kyiv, Khmelnytskyi, Dnipropetrovsk, Kyiv, Zhytomyr, Lviv, Poltava, and Cherkasy regions,” the ministry informed and called on all Ukrainians to help to save energy.
However, today the Russians continue shelling energy facilities and infrastructure. On Monday, Russia launched its most widespread missile strikes on Ukraine since the start of the conflict as revenge for a blown-up bridge linking the Crimean Peninsula with Russia.