This morning, we spoke from Kiev with Oleksiy Ryabtin, a former advisor to Ukraine’s deputy prime minister, about electricity supply across Ukraine in light of repeated power outages.
He said the current situation is “stable and critical.”
Ryabchin said that to ensure Ukraine has the “fastest path” to EU membership, it will focus on rebuilding damaged power plants, building smaller power plants instead of large ones, and ” The aim is to rebuild in a sustainable and decentralized manner.
When asked about the daily power supply, he says, “If the Russian attack hits the energy generation system, there will not be enough power to meet people’s needs.”
He said Russia’s “very brutal” attacks on substation power transmission systems would be “very difficult to manage” and would cause power outages for “two to four to six hours” at a time.
However, compared to other regions, the situation in the metropolis is manageable, he said.
“It’s not very fun when you think about the soldiers on the front lines: the trenches, the cold,” he says.
“So I sit in Kiev or Kharkiv for hours without even having coffee… Now I can talk on my iPad, but in a few hours I might not be able to.”
