Ukraine is facing a winter humanitarian crisis.
Ukraine faces a winter humanitarian crisis unless it can prevent a collapse in its electricity supply, according to the national grid’s chief executive.
Volodymyr Kudrytskyi, the chief executive of Ukrenergo, said that virtually all of the country’s large non-nuclear power stations had been hit.
The energy boss said that Ukraine asked western countries for spare parts last week and that they had called for more missile defence systems to help prevent damaging attacks.
The missile attack on the electricity infrastructure is the biggest in history. The impact is really big. There is a critical situation. He said that they were trying to destroy the Ukrainian power system, which supplies tens of millions of people.
55 cruise missiles and five drones were used on Monday in an attack on the country’s hydro plants for the first time. According to Kudrytskyi, Russian missiles were aimed at the electric infrastructure of the hydro plants, but not the dams themselves, which are considered more resilient.
The damage caused on Monday was significant and in line with the scale of the attack, said the chief executive. This was a huge attack and huge damage was inflicted.
350,000 homes lost power and 80% of the water supply was disrupted, but both had been restored by Tuesday. The governor said 20,000 were still without supply in the region.
Ukrainian officials don’t release pictures of the damage of power plants and substations because they don’t want Russia to see what’s happening and some facilities have been destroyed.
A week ago, Ukraine sent out lists of replacement parts it needed to the US, UK, EU, and other western countries, according to Kudrytskyi. There is an urgent need for western defence systems, which have proven to be very efficient against Russian missiles, according to him.
The chief executive did not agree with the claims that Ukraine could have been better prepared. He said that it wasn’t about our military needs. There is a humanitarian catastrophe that has to be prevented for tens of millions of people in Europe.
He said large cities were at risk because of their huge energy demands. He listed all of the country’s main urban centres.
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