Ukraine has introduced an emergency schedule of power cuts to help stabilise the country’s energy supply, badly damaged by more than 300 Russian drone and missile attacks over the past 10 days.
The country’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said people needed to be “especially conscious of electricity consumption” from 7am and avoid using unnecessary appliances as he warned of local “stabilisation blackouts”.
Three energy facilities were destroyed by Russia on Wednesday, the president added, with a further strike reported in the region of the southern city of Kryvyi Rih overnight amid growing official alarm over the impact of the Russian campaign.
“We are preparing for all possible scenarios in view of the winter season. We assume that Russian terror will be directed at energy facilities until, with the help of partners, we ensure the ability to shoot down 100% of enemy missiles and drones,” Zelenskiy said in his overnight address.
Kyiv and other parts of the country had enjoyed an unseasonably warm spell in mid-October, but on Thursday the weather was markedly cooler. The capital’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, announced the start of the “heating season”, where municipal boilers are turned on to heat apartment blocks.
Earlier this week the president warned that 30% of Ukraine’s power plants had been destroyed in eight days, prompting pleas from the country for air defence systems from the west, which appeared to have been caught by surprise.
There have been more than 300 strikes on Ukrainian energy facilities since 10 October, when the Russian campaign started, said Herman Halushchenko, Ukraine’s energy minister. To help cope, the government was seeking a 20% reduction in energy use.
Some strikes have caused relatively minor damage, which engineers have been able to repair, but government insiders have acknowledged the destruction of some facilities is significant and will in some cases take more than a year to repair.
A Russian airstrike hit a major thermal power station in the city of Burshtyn in western Ukraine on Wednesday. It caused “quite serious” damage, said the governor of the Ivano-Frankivsk region, Svitlana Onyshchuk, on Ukrainian television.
Ukraine’s electricity transmission company, Ukrenergo, warned local blackouts of up to four hours may take place around the country at times between 7am and 10pm, because the energy system had suffered an “attack of the enemy greater than in eight months of war”.
The public was told to have phones and other batteries charged up overnight, while street lighting would be limited in cities. All regions of the country would be affected, said Kyrylo Tymoshenko, the deputy head of the presidential office.