There Is Acute Shortage Of Soviet-Style Transformers In Ukraine - Ukrenergo

Ukraine is experiencing an acute shortage of Soviet-style transformers after the Russian Federation's attacks on the country's power system. This was reported by the Financial Times newspaper with reference to the head of Ukrenergo Volodymyr Kudrytskyi.

It is noted that most of Ukraine's grids uses the old Soviet system. It operates at a higher voltage than the EU, making it incompatible with most Western equipment.

"The shortage of 750 kV transformers, each of which weighs up to 200 tons, is most acutely felt. Although some of them were obtained from former communist countries such as Lithuania, most of the destroyed ones need to be restored," the article says.

Russia is conducting a systematic campaign aimed at destroying transformers, which are located in key nodes of the electricity distribution system, rather than the power plants themselves. According to experts, the Russian Federation planned to break Ukraine's energy system into isolated islands and prevent transmission between regions.

According to Kudrytskyi, during the first eight months of the war, the country had a large supply of transformers, but now they are "extremely necessary". He also emphasized that the attacks on the Ukrainian energy system were planned and carried out not only by the Russian military, but also by the power engineers.

The head of Ukrenergo explained that Russian engineers knew Ukraine's power system "like the back of their hand" because it was connected to their country's system before the invasion last February. But now Ukrainian experts better understand the strategy of the Russian Federation and can take measures "aimed at minimizing the consequences" of attacks, he added.

It will be recalled that earlier Ukrenergo warned about the deterioration of the electricity situation due to the cold weather and damage to power plants.

Energy Minister Herman Halushchenko notes that a blackout in Ukraine is only theoretically possible, but the energy system has constantly proved its resilience during almost three months of massive attacks.