(Dan Tri) – Ukrainian officials believe that Russia is changing the way it attacks Kiev’s energy infrastructure to cause serious, difficult-to-recover damage to its opponents.
A Ukrainian energy facility was destroyed in the raid (Photo: Washington Post).
Financial Times reported that Russia has changed its tactics of attacking Ukraine’s energy industry, by deploying highly accurate missiles to target power plants in less protected areas than the capital Kiev.
These are Ukraine’s defense vulnerabilities that Russia exploited to cause heavy damage to the enemy and put pressure on Kiev.
Some of the energy infrastructure that Russia attacked recently will not be able to be fully repaired until next winter.
`Ukrainian officials said that although the damage during the 2023-2024 winter raid was not as widespread in many areas as last year, the damage caused by Moscow was still more serious. Ukrainian officials said that the target was
Russia targeted seven thermal power plants between March 22 and 29, all in areas other than Kiev, where Ukraine is equipped with the best air defense system in the country.
Ukraine did not provide details on the extent of damage at individual power plants, but officials said some plants, including those in Kharkiv near the Russian border, were nearly destroyed.
`Our goal is to restore as much infrastructure as possible by October,` said Maksym Timchenko, chief executive of DTEK, Ukraine’s largest private energy producer.
DTEK lost about 80% of its power generation capacity during Russian attacks in the last week of March. Five of DTEK’s thermal power plants were forced to shut down.
Mr. Timchenko said the company had plans to bring substations and power plants that were not completely destroyed back into operation: `If there is no further attack, at least 50% of power units will be damaged.`
The same number of missiles as in the 2022-23 winter offensive is being used for five, said Mariia Tsaturian, head of communications at Ukrenergo, Ukraine’s energy transmission system operator.
`Russia is trying to cut off power to industrial zones and large cities,` she said.
According to Ms. Tsaturian, defensive complexes could be used to protect small substations managed by Ukrenergo from Russian attacks, but `it is very difficult, if not impossible` to protect them.
`A key difference from the winter of 2022-2023 is that Russia is deploying expensive high-precision ballistic missiles,` said Andrii Herus, head of Ukraine’s parliamentary committee on energy.
Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence Agency estimates that Russia has enough missiles to carry out one or two large-scale attacks in the coming weeks.
In the past, when Ukraine and the West said that Russia was running out of missiles, Moscow often carried out large-scale attacks immediately afterward.