The Ukrainian energy system is going through a difficult period, and the coming weeks may become even harder for several regions. This was stated by Andriy Gerus, the head of the parliamentary committee on energy and housing and communal services, emphasizing the likelihood of new attacks on energy infrastructure.
This is reported by Kyiv24
Critical State of the Energy System and Predictions for February
According to Andriy Gerus, it is expected that the situation will remain tense over the next 30 days, with significant improvements possible only after the cold weather eases at the end of the week. He explained that even with the increasing daylight hours and the activation of solar generation, a substantial increase in electricity during the day will only be felt from mid-February. Gerus urged citizens to be prepared for challenging conditions and to consider potential difficulties with electricity and heating supply.
“Do you want to ask if we will have a more difficult period than now? The next 30 days will be tough for us. I sometimes hear that it will get better from January 15 or next week – and at the end, they add in small letters: provided there are no new shellings. But there is a high probability that new shellings will occur. So these ‘good news’ are certainly nice, but if you ask for my opinion, I believe that the situation will be difficult until February 15-20. It may become easier when the frosts ease a bit – around the end of this week,” Gerus noted.
Most Affected Cities and Recommendations for the Population
The worst electricity supply situation is currently observed in the Odesa region and Odesa itself. Additionally, significant difficulties are noted in Kharkiv, Dnipro, Kryvyi Rih, Chernihiv, Sumy, Zaporizhzhia, and Kyiv. According to Gerus, Kyiv and its surrounding infrastructure have recently become primary targets for attacks by the Russian Federation. The situation remains particularly challenging in the capital, where emergency outages were introduced following the strike on January 9, and critical infrastructure sustained significant damage.
At the same time, Gerus emphasized that the current state of the energy system is not a result of a failure in preparation. He noted that much has been done to protect facilities, and the situation could have been much worse. The deputy also compared the situations in Kyiv and Kharkiv, highlighting that over the past month and a half, Kyiv has experienced more attacks than Kharkiv, although Kharkiv was the most affected city since the beginning of the war.
Regarding further actions, Gerus believes that the strategic direction should be the development of distributed generation, with a particular focus on central and eastern regions of Ukraine. He also recommended that residents follow the advice of local authorities in cases of heating shortages, specifically, if possible, to temporarily leave cold accommodations.
President Volodymyr Zelensky, in a recent address, reported that Russia is preparing new massive strikes on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure and urged citizens to be especially vigilant regarding air raid alerts. According to intelligence, Russia is considering attacks on substations of nuclear power plants to weaken Ukrainian resistance. Following the latest shellings, a state of emergency is in effect in Ukraine’s energy system, and Kyiv and the Kyiv region remain in the most challenging situation in the last four years.
