Ukrainians will face lengthy, daily interruptions in electricity until the end of July as scheduled repairs at nuclear power plants put further strain on the country's already heavily damaged energy system, the head of grid operator Ukrenergo Volodymyr Kudritsky said.
"The next week and even the next few weeks the situation will be much more difficult than today," he told Suspilne TV, adding that the heaviest blackouts will occur between 11 a.m. and 11 p.m.
Repairs on reactor units on Ukraine's nuclear power plants necessitate the power cuts as Russian attacks have destroyed or damaged non-nuclear power plants and energy infrastructure Ukraine would have been able to use to supplement the shortage, he said.
"But we will try to determine the size of this deficit in advance so that the outages are still planned. They may be a little longer, but it is important that they are planned."
Russian attacks in recent weeks have caused major country-wide power outages. The regions have been ordered to reduce energy consumption.
Speaking at the Ukraine recovery conference on June 11, President Volodymyr Zelensky said that Russian and drone attacks have destroyed 9 gigawatts (GW) of Ukraine's capacity total energy capacity.
The peak energy consumption last winter was 18 GW — "half of that is gone now," Zelensky noted.
Ukrainians could face up to 20 hours of blackouts a day under a “worst-case” scenario if the country cannot repair and properly defend its energy infrastructure from Russian attacks, Executive Director of Ukraine’s largest privately-owned energy company DTEK Dmytro Sakharuk told the Kyiv Independent.
Liliane Bivings
