Ukraine’s utilities threatened by Russia in war’s new phase

Russia has declared its intention to increase its targeting of Ukraine’s power, water and other vital infrastructure in the latest phase of the nearly eight-month-old war.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Moscow’s forces have destroyed 30% of the country’s power stations since October 10.

But Ukrainians are vowing to stand firm despite the attacks that threaten cuts in electricity, water and heat.

|Many people in the country have stockpiled torches, candles and firewood, and also stored canned and preserved vegetables as well as bottled water and warm clothes.

One Ukrainian energy official said on Wednesday that 40% of the country’s electric power system had been severely damaged.

The attacks have come at a critical time, with winter approaching. Kyiv Mayor Vitaliy Klitschko said that Thursday marks the start of the heating season for Kyiv, which like most urban centres in Ukraine and even Russia uses a Soviet-era central system controlled by the city that provides heat for apartment buildings and businesses.

Following a meeting between Mr Zelensky, government ministers, members of energy enterprises and some local officials, presidential adviser Kyrylo Tymoshenko said there would be power supply restrictions across Ukraine from 7am to 11am beginning on Thursday, along with the use of street lights being limited in some cities.

“Please take this seriously,” Mr Tymoshenko said on his Telegram channel.

“This applies to residents of ALL regions of the country. … These are forced steps. Therefore, we all work together on our front!”

One area where power and water were reported knocked out by shelling was Enerhodar, the southern city is next to the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, one of the war’s most worrying flashpoints.

Missiles also severely damaged an energy facility near Mr Zelensky’s hometown of Kryvyi Rih in south-central Ukraine, cutting power to villages, towns and to one city district, the regional governor said.

Using energy supplies as a weapon is not a new tactic for the Kremlin, particularly when it comes to Ukraine.

Hanna Shelest, the director of security programmes at Foreign Policy Council Ukrainian Prism, based in Kyiv, said: “Energy was always quite a holy cow for the Russians, and they claim that by controlling energy they can control the country.”

Mr Putin, who declared martial law in four illegally annexed regions of Ukraine, has used his ability to turn off the gas that passes through the country’s extensive, Soviet-era pipeline as leverage.

His tactic has been used not just against the government in Kyiv, but also against energy-dependent nations in Europe, who built pipelines via the North Sea for Russian gas.

Under its new strategy, the Russian military hopes to destroy enough of Ukraine’s infrastructure to make life so intolerable that residents will blame their own government, Ms Shelest said.

Mr Putin has called Ukraine a failed state and a historical part of Russia. In trying to make Ukrainians suffer, he hopes they will believe him, she said.

“What we see now is that it is definitely not working so well,” Ms Shelest said, adding that Ukrainians are increasingly directing their rage at Putin.

Mason Clark, an analyst at the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War, said Mr Zelensky’s admission that Russia had knocked out nearly a third of Ukraine’s power stations was noteworthy.

“If the Russians can keep up that sustained damage, and the Ukrainians can’t repair it, that could actually start to have an effect,” he said.

Mr Clark said he did not believe Russia would be able to affect the Ukrainian population’s overwhelming support for their military in taking back the territory seized by Moscow.

Recent attacks by what Kyiv describes as Iranian-supplied drones and missiles against civilian housing and other non-military targets “seem to be just terror attacks, essentially to try to intimidate the Ukrainian population”, he said.

From a military sense, Russia’s use of the Iranian-supplied drones and Kalibr and Iskander cruise missiles against Ukrainian infrastructure is a “very poor use of limited-precision munitions,” Mr Clark said.

The Russians are struggling with dwindling supplies of these high-end weapons, he said, adding that a more strategic move would be to save them for the battlefield, because Ukraine’s air defences have succeeded in intercepting and shooting down many of the drones.

In the Kharkiv region, government official Roman Semenukha said Sunday that while repairs to heating systems were underway around the recently liberated city of Kupiansk, it’s a slow process that first must restore electricity, gas and water.

Regional authorities in Kharkiv also are assessing the need for firewood, Besedin said, adding that warming shelters will be set up and authorities would offer to evacuate those who want to leave for the winter.