It’s tough to understand the situation of the Ukrainians who are facing new problems in due course of time. With winter approaching, a significant problem the country is going to face in an even worse way is electricity cuts.
The geographical location of Ukraine makes it fall in an area where the snowfall is high, and winters are known to be very hard. In higher snowfall conditions, the power cuts will mean that people cannot use the thermostats in their homes.
Further, it’s worth noting that Russia openly declared its intention to target Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, which would cause the country to suffer from more blackouts. The people can’t even count how many times they had eaten in the dark after attacks by Russian forces triggered blackouts in October.
As the government scrambles to repair the energy grid before winter, rolling blackouts have become a more frequent occurrence. According to the Ukrainian government, Russia has already destroyed about 40% of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, which affects 16 different regions.
The cuts add an extra layer of stress on top of everything else that the population has been going through for nearly 9 months.
However, efforts are being made to provide people with a little bit of hope. To give people more power over their electricity usage, some energy companies are publishing daily schedules of when neighborhoods will not have access to power.
But it’s not always consistent, especially with the most recent strikes by the Russian military.
A power station located in the central region was severely vandalized last week. Authorities have warned that this will lead to an emergency shutdown and outages with tougher conditions and longer durations.
Across the city, people are making plans for how to make it through this winter. They’re buying backup fuel, blankets, warm clothes, and power banks to charge phones.
While most people are willing to bear the burden of the outages for the sake of the war, the frequency and fluidity of these events are taxing. Moreover, starting next Tuesday, the Kyiv Metro administration is changing the schedule to include longer wait times to save energy.
Whenever a power outage occurs, the families lose internet service. Cellular coverage is also very limited in most villages, making it difficult for households to communicate with the outside world.
The repairs of the power grids and the infrastructure have also gone out of limits now. The main energy company in Ukraine, DTEK, has run out of equipment for repairs.
They said that repairs are now costing them millions of dollars which is becoming a liability for a country that is also present on the war front with a relatively stronger country.
This situation might worsen with time as many reports are claiming that Russia will continue the fight in winter. Russia is boosting weapon production and trying to weaken the support of Western countries to Ukraine. All of this hints that Russia is not ready to stop, not as of now.
