Dmytro Sakharuk, executive director of DTEK, at his office in Kyiv, on Oct. 30.Anton Skyba/The Globe and Mail
Ukraine’s biggest private power producer, DTEK, is fortifying its electrical system in the belief that Russia will try to ensure the country once again is plunged into darkness over the winter.
The company, which produces about a quarter of Ukraine’s electricity, mostly from coal plants, has been barricading its generating plants and transmission network with a variety of structures. Steel cages with wire nets have been erected over boilers and compressor units to protect them from drones equipped with warheads. Walls of sandbags and concrete blocks now encircle the generating plants themselves and the electricity transformers, which regulate the voltage.
In the meantime, DTEK hopes the Ukraine military is bulking up its air defences near the plants. “That information is classified, but I do believe they have installed more anti-missile systems,” Dmitriy Sakharuk, the company’s executive director, said in an interview Monday with The Globe and Mail.
The goal, he said, is to avoid last winter’s disaster, when relentless Russian missile and drone attacks destroyed or damaged much of DTEK’s generating and transmission network. The company’s key assets include six large coal plants (two other plants are in Russian-occupied territory).
At one point last winter, available generating and transmission capacity had fallen to 50 per cent of normal levels, leaving vast swathes of Ukraine and millions of residents without electricity and heat for days or weeks at a time. DTEK recorded thousands of hits that destroyed or damaged about 14,500 pieces of equipment.
The lack of electricity battered manufacturers and other businesses, as well as the transportation system, including the electric-rail network. According to the National Bank of Ukraine, the power outages alone cost the economy 1.3 percentage points of gross domestic product.
An extensive rebuilding program since then, valued at about €500-million ($734-million), has raised the capacity to about 80 per cent. The program included ramped-up domestic coal production and coal imports from Poland, plus extra natural gas production, to ensure there are enough fuel reserves in case of supply disruptions.
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In spite of the extra protection, DTEK and the Ukraine government expect Russia to inflict potentially serious damage on the domestic electricity system, whose biggest single player is Ukrenergo, the national, government-owned grid operator. DTEK expects the Russian military to change its attack tactics to do so.
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky last week said that Ukraine is ready to counter attack if its electricity system is crippled again. “We are preparing for terrorist attacks on our energy infrastructure,” he said. “This year we will not only defend ourselves, but also respond.”
He did not say how Ukraine would respond, but the military recently has received long-range missiles, including American ATACMS, whose cluster-munitions warheads can hit targets 165 kilometres away. Ukraine also expects to receive a small fleet of U.S.-built F-16 fighter-bombers sometime next year.
Mr. Sakharuk expects the first wave of attacks to begin when the weather turns; the autumn so far has been unusually mild. “The weather is too warm for them to start big attacks,” he said. “The Russians know it is easier to repair the plants when the weather is good, so they will wait until it gets cold.”
The few recent attacks have been fairly small. Last week, a coal plant near Kurakhove, in east Ukraine, only about 15 kilometres from the front lines, was hit by Russian cannon fire. The damage was repaired quickly but many villages in the area were temporarily without electricity. The plant was attacked again on Monday night.
Mr. Sakharuk thinks the inevitable Russian winter attacks on the country’s energy infrastructure could be massive and come in quick waves of drones or missiles. “Ukraine’s forces may be able to intercept the first and second wave but maybe not the third if the enemy is able to exhaust our anti-missile system,” he said.
Last winter, the Russians first hit some plants with relatively light drones. After the drones exploded, teams of firefighters, medics and soldiers would arrive on the scene. Shortly thereafter, Russia would batter the plants with old but highly destructive Kh-101 and Kh-555 cruise missiles, launched from Russian strategic bombers, whose shrapnel could spread for 600 metres in every direction. DTEK believes the sequence was intentional, so the Russians could kill or injure as many personnel as possible at or near the damaged plant.
Attacks on DTEK sites have killed four employees and wounded 45 others. Since the start of the war in February of last year, 219 DTEK employees serving in the military have been killed, with 679 wounded, 48 missing and eight in captivity. The company is one of Ukraine’s largest employers, and almost 10 per cent of its 55,000 workers are currently in military service.
Eric Reguly