Ukraine’s coming winter looks colder after Russia targets energy supply

theguardian.com:

It is a grim warning. While attention has been focused on the civilian casualties and chaos caused by Russia’s renewed bombing of Kyiv and other major cities, its impact on the country’s energy supply has not been quantified until today.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy announced that 30% of the country’s power stations had been knocked out in just eight days, an astonishing proportion in a short amount of time with blackouts occurring in the east of the capital.

At one point Ukraine, connected to the European grid, was an energy exporter, partly because of its large nuclear power stations. But with the Zaporizhzhia plant, seized by the Russians, already shut down, the surplus, the president acknowledged earlier this month, had gone.

Now, Ukrainians need to prepare for “rolling blackouts” and people will have to conserve energy, the deputy head of the president’s office, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, warned on national television on Thursday. The country needed, he added, to be prepared for “a hard winter”.

Politicians in Ukraine have been warning for months now that Russia would target the energy grid in the run up to winter, where temperatures can drop to -10C and even -20C. In some frontline areas, such as Donbas, there are already no gas supplies for heating the apartment blocks where so many live.

Quietly around the country there have been efforts to ensure hospitals and military sites have backup generators available. But it will not be enough for civilians and it is clear that the situation – and the bleak initial effectiveness of the Russian strategy – could make for a very difficult period.

Some experts have feared there could even be a renewed migration crisis, as people seek to leave the country in pursuit of warmth. One