Ukraine lacks anti-aircraft missiles to protect renovated energy facilities – DTEK
DTEK energy company believes that the main reason for the deterioration of the situation in Ukraine's energy system is the shortage of missiles for air defense systems. Because of this, Ukraine is unable to protect the repaired facilities, said the executive director of DTEK, Dmytro Sakharuk, Kyiv Post reports.
According to Sakharuk, for every missile that Ukraine currently has, there are five to six Russian missiles.
"If 10 missiles are coming in, you need at least 12 missiles in the air defense … so, even if we start recovering, start repairing, there’s no means right now to protect [the] recovered units," he stated.
The director of DTEK also criticized the insufficient financing by the Ukrainian authorities of the private sector of electricity generation and "inadequate governance", which worsens the situation.
"In Ukraine, there is no capital in private hands. The capital only goes through government to government. [The] private sector is zero right now. The state sector could not deliver results quickly in time, except [for a] few exceptions. We have some. But in general, it’s just total managerial inability to do something in time," he said, adding that it would take about $1 billion to restore one GW of energy.
According to Sakharuk, there are several ways to deal with the deficit in the energy system — decentralized electricity production, restoration of destroyed facilities and imports from Europe. Each method has its own difficulties.
"We have to recover as much generation capability as possible before winter; We have to ask for extra air defense to protect what we recover, but also we have to roll out new generation facilities to make sure that if Russians undertake these attacks, they cannot concentrate on 10 or 15 big power plants, but they would have to deal with hundreds of smaller ones," said the DTEK director.
He added that Ukraine would need at least a few GW to replace the ones lost, but still, the country "would not be able to recover in the next two to three years."
Since the end of March, the Russians have carried out eight massive attacks on the Ukrainian energy industry. The aggressor purposefully attacked all large thermal and hydroelectric power plants of Ukraine. Due to extensive damage, the facilities cannot produce as much electricity as before the attacks. All over the country, there are blackout schedules almost every day.
- Share: