Ukraine braces for harshest winter yet as Russian attacks on energy infrastructure intensifies

KIEV, Ukraine — Ukraine’s prime minister warned Tuesday that the country could face its harshest winter since the start of a full-scale Russian invasion, as airstrikes on the country’s vulnerable energy infrastructure intensify.

Russian attacks continue to negatively impact Ukraine’s generating capacity, making the country heavily dependent on its three operational nuclear power plants and electricity imports from European Union countries.

“One of our biggest challenges this year is energy resilience,” Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said at a press conference in Kyiv.

“We’ve successfully survived what has essentially been two and a half winters. We’ll survive three, and the coming heating season will likely be just as difficult, if not the most difficult,” he said.

Shmyhal said the Ukrainian government, backed by European countries, is urgently developing initiatives to decentralize energy generation to make it less vulnerable to attack. That includes expanding renewable capacity — a development praised by environmental groups.

Greenpeace argues that a decentralized solar power grid — which would be harder to damage by Russian missile and drone strikes — could quickly help repair the country’s generating capacity, and is calling on the government to be bolder in its expansion of green energy.

The group is calling for internationally supported investments worth almost €4.5 billion ($4.9 billion) by 2030. They are to focus on renewable energy projects, dominated by the photovoltaic sector.

“(Our) research says that the current targets that the Ukrainian government has set for achieving solar energy by 2027 could be increased by at least five times. This is a very conservative estimate,” Natalia Gozak, head of Greenpeace Ukraine, told The Associated Press after opening the group’s office in Kyiv on Tuesday.

According to the United Nations and the World Bank, Ukraine lost more than half of its generating capacity in the first 14 months of the war, and the situation continued to worsen. Much of the country’s solar production was also lost because areas in the south of the country, where there was more sunlight, came under Russian occupation.

Ukraine’s pre-war energy mix relied mostly on traditional energy sources, with coal, oil, natural gas and nuclear energy accounting for almost 95% of the total, according to data from both organizations.

Alexander Egit, executive director of Greenpeace for Central and Eastern Europe, appealed to Western donor countries to support projects focusing on renewable energy sources during and after the war.

“We expect the European Union and other countries to invest billions of euros in Ukraine’s reconstruction,” he said. “Greenpeace’s role is to advocate for decentralized renewable energy to ensure Ukraine’s reconstruction as a modern, green and independent state.”