How Ukraine managed to win the war by keeping the lights on

Electric trams are back in service in Kiev and electric scooters dot the sidewalks. With the curfew extended to midnight, the streets are bright and lively. Portable generators, nearly unobtainable when they rolled off shelves in December, sell for half price.

The Kremlin’s campaign to break the Ukrainian will to fight by arming the winter and cutting electricity finally failedbut there were times when it seemed that all was lost.

The darkest week of a long cold season came in mid-November, when Russian missiles rained down from three directions and they headed for Ukrainian power plants.

Energy officials, meeting in a secret bunker in Kiev, watched as alarms flashed on large screens that mapped the country’s electricity grid as critical substations, thermal power plants and hydroelectric plants were shut down.

Out of order

Then something happened that they had never seen before during weeks of bombing: all of the nation’s nuclear power plants lost power.

Within seconds, control rods located above reactors at Ukraine’s three operational plants dropped into the cores to absorb neutrons and halt the chain reaction that could lead to a meltdown. The reactors, which supply 50% of the country’s energy, they were out of order.

At the same time, Russian missiles and drones cut Ukraine’s connection to the European electricity grida key energy source that helped Ukraine avoid the collapse of its grid.

In a continent of light, Ukraine was an island of darkness. Millions had no heat. The toilets didn’t work. Queues formed at the old wells as people carried jugs of water into dark Kiev apartments. Internet service has gone down for many. Officials discussed mass evacuation plans.

“These have been some of the hardest days,” Ukrainian Energy Minister Herman Galushchenko said in an interview.

Given the depth of the crisis, described in more than a dozen interviews with senior energy officials, utility workers, government officials and military intelligence, it is all the more remarkable that as winter has eased its icy grip, the Ukraine’s power grid not only survives but also it was able, in early March, to produce excess power for the first time in months.

However, significant power problems can still arise.

Avoiding the relentless bombing has drastically depleted Ukraine’s air defenses, recently leaked Pentagon documents show, and there are concerns that Russian bombers could soon be hovering over Ukrainian cities unscathed.

Full support

But for now, instead of breaking the Ukrainian spirit, bombing they have only made the Ukrainians more determined.

Around 97% of Ukrainians polled now say they believe they will win the warwith 74% expecting Ukraine to keep all territory within internationally recognized borders in 1991. The national survey released in March was conducted by the National Qualification Group, the largest independent research organization in the Ukraine.

However, much work still remains to be done. Russian attacks destroyed or damaged more than 40% of the nation’s energy infrastructureand repairs will cost billions of dollars, according to a new World Bank report.

It wasn’t just missiles.

In towns and cities where Russian forces were forced to retreat, the infrastructure was deliberately destroyed as the invaders fled. They have littered the ground with thousands of mines, making repair work slow and treacherous. And along the front lines, ruined towns and villages were left without electricity for months.

The first wave of missiles stunned to Ukrainian energy workers.

“They all had big eyes,” said Ihor, the chief engineer of a critical substation.

But after two or three weeks, he said, the pattern of Russian airstrikes became clear and utility workers measures learned to protectr some of the most vital equipment.

“The following attacks were scary, but we already knew what to do,” Ihor said. “We feel much safer.”

It was allowed New York Times visit several substations that had been repeatedly attacked on the condition that he would not reveal their locations or the full names of employees, for security reasons.

At the heart of any electrical substation are large size and high power autotransformers. These are used to convert high voltage electricity during transmission into low voltage for distribution to consumers.

Ukrainian officials suspect that the Russian missiles, assisted by electrical engineers and detailed maps of the Ukrainian network, they knew exactly what to aim for. The new transformers cost about $2 million and weigh hundreds of tons, and Russia has destroyed dozens of them.

But the attacks on the Russian network have also somewhat failed, prompting supporters of Ukraine to speed up the delivery of the air defense systems that Kiev has wanted since the early days of the war.

Since Ukraine got these systems, Damage dealt by missile barrages has decreased dramaticallyVolodymyr Kudrytskyi, head of Ukraine’s national electricity company Ukrenergo, said in an interview in March.

However, Ukraine still has few ballistic missile defenses and failed to shoot down six Russian Kinzhal hypersonic missiles in the latest large-scale strike on 9 March.

Kudrytskyi said engineers have been working closely with the military to monitor the incoming waves of missiles and drones and they tried to prepare the net to limit the damage.

Without going into technical details for safety reasons, he compared it to the balance of riding a bicycle. The system must always maintain stability between generation and consumption and a fluctuation of even 1% can create cascading events that spread throughout the system and cause widespread blackouts.

massive attacks

Russia’s goal has been to unbalance the system. Ukraine has found ways to make this much more difficult, in part by cutting its connection to the Russian electricity grid and plugging into the European system.

Russian forces have repeatedly attempted to attack lines from Europe to Ukraine, and two major attacks in November briefly severed that link. That was also the time when nuclear power plants burned out.

But it was by visiting one of those plants a few months after that Galushchenko, the energy minister, became convinced Ukraine would have made it through the winter. He found that repair work that should have taken 260 working days had been completed in just 40.

For millions of Ukrainians, the battle for energy was felt every time the lights went out.

“It was a crazy time,” said Julia Shpyg, manager of the Electric Cinema amphitheater. “I woke up one day and I had no electricity. I went to work, thinking there would be light here and it was also interrupted. That’s when I realized how bad it was”.

“Going to the cinema is like a vacation, a few hours to forget the war,” said Shpyg. Now this was being questioned.

But the theatre, like so many businesses, has found a way to stay open, using generators to offer limited functions.

It no longer needs the generators and the only disruption the public faces is the near-daily air raids, a reminder that Russia hasn’t stopped trying to subdue Ukraine.

“Hopefully, we shall never pass Let’s toast to another winter like the one we just experienced,” said Shpyg.

The New York Times