Ukraine's Ongoing Energy Crisis

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Russian Roulette – "Ukraine's Ongoing Energy Crisis"

Podcast: Russian Roulette
Host(s): Max Bergman & Maria Snegovaya (CSIS Russia and Eurasia Program)
Guests:

• Dr. Andrian Prokip, Head of the Energy Program, Ukrainian Institute for the Future; Senior Research Fellow, Kennan Institute
• Tim McDonnell, Climate & Energy Editor, Semafor (based in Kyiv)
  Release Date: February 12, 2026
  Total Duration: ~48 minutes

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Episode Overview

This episode examines the humanitarian and strategic crisis caused by Russia's focused attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure during a historic cold spell. Hosts Max Bergman and Maria Snegovaya facilitate an expert discussion with Dr. Andrian Prokip and Tim McDonnell, providing on-the-ground accounts, analysis of Russian tactics, societal impacts, and the current and future prospects for Ukraine’s energy sector.

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Key Topics & Discussion Points

1. The Current Situation: Ukraine’s Energy Crisis

[02:00 – 05:40]

• Scale of Damage: Russia continues to target and destroy energy assets in Ukraine, focusing on electricity, heating, and gas infrastructure.
• Personal Impact: Tim McDonnell, speaking from Kyiv without electricity, shares the lived experience amid water outages and property damage.
• Intensity: Attacks have surged in frequency and scale, especially during the coldest winter in two decades, using drones and missiles to maximize disruption.
• Severity: DETEK (Ukraine’s major private energy company) has lost two-thirds of its power generation capacity.

"It's cold...dark, and there's no electricity in my apartment... The real problem in the last few weeks has really been the heating because they've taken out so much of the heating infrastructure. Kyiv is locked in ice... People are just really, really suffering through this period of having no heat in their apartments and trying to survive any way they can."
— Tim McDonnell [02:29]

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2. Russian Strategies and Tactical Shifts

[05:59 – 14:03]

• Shift in Tactics: Russians now attack all forms of energy infrastructure (electricity, gas, fuel) simultaneously—up to 20 times more frequent than previous years.
• Psychological Warfare: The aim is not just functional collapse, but also to pressure civilians psychologically and incite panic.
• Unprecedented Attacks: Over 50,000 drones were launched in the previous year, making defense extremely difficult; Ukraine’s energy system has never faced such sustained assault in history.
• Goals: Unclear intentions—Russia teeters between seeking systemic collapse and sustaining pressure to keep Ukraine near the edge of failure.

"Never in human history any energy system could even expect such severe attacks. That's the fourth year of Russian energy terror... it's a miracle that the Ukrainian energy system is still surviving."
— Dr. Andrian Prokip [08:31]

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3. Humanitarian Consequences & Resilience

[14:34 – 19:50]

• Compounded Hardships: Loss of electricity is damaging but manageable; loss of heating is far worse and life-threatening, especially for vulnerable populations.
• Adaptive Strategies: Ukrainians have adapted with small-scale solutions—batteries, generators, grouping together, and finding temporary accommodations.
• Morale and Social Cohesion: Despite immense hardship, the attacks seem to harden Ukrainian resolve. Communities organize block parties, mutual aid, and exhibit strong resilience.

"People bond together, they come out to help their neighbors... If you have a restaurant with a generator, you let people come in to warm up. If [the] intention was to break the spirit of the Ukrainian people, that strategy hasn't worked so far."
— Tim McDonnell [19:51, 14:34]

• Vivid Example: Some Kyiv residential areas have been without heat for a week, with unclear prospects for restoration before winter’s end; over 1,000 apartment buildings affected, representing a humanitarian disaster.

"As of now, more than 10% of Kyiv residents remain without heating when it's like 0°F. That still looks like committing humanitarian crimes and crimes against humanity."
— Dr. Andrian Prokip [13:46]

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4. Morale and the Will to Resist

[18:07 – 25:14]

• Psychological Aims & Real Outcomes: Putin’s intent to create suffering as leverage for negotiations is countered by strengthened societal resolve and desire to resist further Russian demands.
• Public Sentiment: Ukrainians remain unwilling to cede territory, even under extreme duress, and continue to seek international aid and clear security guarantees.

"People are exhausted... But giving up large portions of Donbas... is still extremely unpopular. People don't want to give up any more territory than they already have."
— Tim McDonnell [21:20]

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5. Historical Parallels: Holodomor and Modern "Holodomor"

[25:14 – 30:31]

• Legacy of Russian Imperialism: The current strategy is compared to Stalin-era deliberate starvation (Holodomor), now echoed as “Holodomor”—death by cold.
• Imperial Continuities: Energy has long been used by Russia as a tool of coercion—first economically (e.g., gas pipelines, Nord Stream), now militarily.

"Energy has clearly been seen as a tool of coercion and leverage by Russia for both Ukraine and Europe for many years. What we're seeing this winter is just the fullest expression of that strategy."
— Tim McDonnell [28:05]

• Real Life Toll: Dr. Prokip recounts the death of a Holocaust survivor in Kyiv from cold—"She survived the Holocaust, but she didn't survive Russian so-called denazification because she died from the cold in her apartment" [30:12].

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6. Vulnerabilities of Energy Infrastructure and Steps for Resilience

[30:31 – 41:49]

• Structural Challenges: Ukraine’s Soviet-designed, centralized large power plants are highly vulnerable to attack—air defense alone is insufficient; complete physical protection is impractical.
• Counterstrike as Deterrent: Dr. Prokip argues for the necessity of striking Russian infrastructure in response—"Russians understand only power, all the threats..." [34:15].
• Distributed Solutions: Both guests highlight increased adoption of solar, batteries, and distributed generation at the household, business, and utility scale.
• Grid Modernization: Renewables like large wind farms are being built; it's harder and less efficient for Russia to destroy these decentralized assets.
• Supply Bottlenecks: There are acute shortages of air defense missiles and critical energy hardware, compounded by global supply chain strains and reduced Western aid (e.g., dissolution of USAID energy aid under prior U.S. administration).

"It's actually an incredibly interesting view of what energy security or distributed energy looks like: from massive centralized plants to tiny batteries in everyone's apartment."
— Tim McDonnell [39:50]

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7. Reconstruction and the Way Forward

[41:49 – 47:49]

• Ongoing Reconstruction: There is a shift from ‘post-war’ reconstruction to urgent, concurrent modernization, incorporating lessons from war.
• Key Initiatives:
  • Rapid expansion and localization of renewable energy technologies and equipment manufacturing.
  • Market liberalization reforms to incentivize investment and resilience.
  • Increased European power interconnection for immediate and future needs.
  • Continued need for Western material aid, technology, and insurance products to facilitate investment.
• Counter-Offensives: Ukrainian strikes on Russian refineries with Western support are seen as part of a necessary defense.

"Energy companies are not waiting for the moment when war ends. They realized that we shouldn't waste time and we have to go ahead in modification of the energy sector right now."
— Dr. Andrian Prokip [45:11]

"There's a lot of work... that can be done starting now while the war is still ongoing to begin building some assets and reconstructing... All of that stuff is really important."
— Tim McDonnell [45:56]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• The Miracle of Survival: "That's a miracle that Ukrainian energy system and the Ukrainian people are still capable and ready to fight for independence..."
  — Dr. Andrian Prokip [24:49]

• Energy as Weapon & Historical Patterns:
  "They set this trap and now are seeing it through."
  — Tim McDonnell [28:14]

• The Lived Reality:
  "I know people who have icicles inside their buildings... There are elderly people, young children—it really is a humanitarian crisis."
  — Tim McDonnell [14:34]

• On the Weaponization of Cold: "Holodomor—death from hunger or death from cold... Moscow doing the same by magnifying the effects of the brutal cold."
  — Maria Snegovaya [25:19]

• On Adaptability:
  "Had not Ukrainians had the experience of blackouts already, this winter would be way worse... It’s an incredibly interesting view of distributed energy."
  — Tim McDonnell [39:20]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [02:00 – 05:40] — Conditions in Kyiv and energy attacks
• [05:59 – 14:03] — Russian tactics, humanitarian impact, heating crisis
• [14:34 – 19:50] — Resilience, adaptation, coping with crisis
• [18:07 – 25:14] — Morale, resolve, attitudes towards negotiations
• [25:14 – 30:31] — Historical parallels: Holodomor and Russian strategy
• [30:31 – 41:49] — Hardening the grid, renewables, distributed energy, and bottlenecks
• [41:49 – 47:49] — Reconstruction during war, Western roles, and modernization

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Conclusion

This episode details the intersection of war, energy, and resilience in Ukraine—offering a deeply human account of day-to-day survival alongside strategic analysis. Despite relentless Russian attacks, the Ukrainian energy system endures, civilian morale remains high, and adaptation is in full force both at the grassroots and policy levels. The guests emphasize not only the severity of the current crisis but also the opportunities for Ukraine, with a shift toward distributed and renewable energy, market reforms, and ongoing partnerships with the West.

Essential Takeaway:
Ukraine’s energy crisis is both a humanitarian and strategic battleground, but from crisis emerges resilience, adaptation, and the seeds of post-war transformation—if the nation and its allies act decisively.

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Transcript

[A]

Welcome back. I'm Max Bergman, director of the Stewart center and Europe Russia Eurasia Program at csis.

[B]

And I'm Maria Snigavaya, senior fellow for Russia and Eurasia.

[A]

And you're listening to Russian Roulette, a podcast discussing all things Russia and Eurasia from the center for Strategic International Studies. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Russian Roulette. We've got a great and unfortunately very timely episode today, and we're thrilled to have you all here to join us. Maria and I are speaking with two experts on the Ukrainian energy system. As we speak, Russia continues to bombard Kiev and other major Ukrainian cities and regions to cripple the country's energy and particularly heating infrastructure. If you haven't been, Ukraine gets very cold in the wintertime, and this has made Russia's attacks extremely urgent for the Ukrainian people. This is bordering, I think, on a humanitarian crisis, or maybe already is a humanitarian crisis. And to talk with us about this crisis and its implications, we're joined by two fantastic guests. First, we have Andrean Pro Kip. Andrean is head of the energy program at the Ukrainian Institute for the Future, a think tank based in Kiev. Additionally, he is a senior research fellow at the Kennan institute here in D.C. run by our good friend and friend of the show, Michael. Andrea, thanks so much for joining us today.

[C]

Thank you for inviting me.

[A]

Additionally, we're thrilled to speak Today with Tim McDonnell. Tim is the climate and energy editor at Semaphore and is also based in Kyiv. Tim unfortunately just lost power, so we're not really able to see him coming to us on his screen. He's still able to speak with us. But, Tim, it's great to have you with us.

[D]

Happy to. My pleasure.

[A]

So, Tim, maybe I'll start with you if you could maybe give us an overall framing of what's going on right now in Kyiv and across Ukraine. What is the scale of the Russian assault on the Ukrainian energy system? And, and how, how is it impacting daily, daily life? I mean, how are you going to get through the night right now? So maybe you could give us that, that kind of big picture overview. And then how is it impacting you personally? Yeah, as well?

[D]

Well, it's, it's cold, as you said, and dark and there's no electricity in my apartment.

[A]

Or.

[D]

And we, we have water at the moment, which is good. We've had a lot of, sometimes they turn the water off to keep people's pipes from bursting when the heat is off. But I know a lot of people who have had that problem And a lot of property damage there. But, but just the, you know, to step back the context here. So I mean, I mean, since the full scale invasion of Ukraine started in 2022, energy assets, energy infrastructure have been a main target for the Russian military. And they've been targeting and distribution networks, substations, also gas production facilities, gas storage, all kinds of energy facilities. And these attacks have tended to ramp up more in the summer and especially in the winter seasons when electricity demand and heating demand are at their peaks. And we thought that we had seen kind of the worst of this in the last few years. And everyone in Ukraine now is very accustomed to dealing with prolonged blackouts in the summer and the winter. And we've been living through that for the last several years. This winter and the last, I would say month or so has been, I think, fair to say the worst of the war because the scale of attacks has been really, really extreme. It also just happens to be an especially unseasonably cold winter. And those things are not a coincidence, by the way. I mean, the Russian military is obviously responding to weather conditions, you making these attacks in a very targeted and conscientious way to take advantage of winter weather to weaponize it. And so what we've seen in the last, starting just after the new year and sort of early to mid January when the temperatures really started to go down, there were a number of really huge attacks. These are sometimes dozens of drones and missiles that are flying to target energy objects across Ukraine. And it's just reached a point where it's becoming, become really severe. You know, not, not having electricity for, certainly for hours, but sometimes even days at a time. And then the real problem in the last few weeks has really been the heating because they've taken out so much of the heating infrastructure. And Kyiv has just, you know, Kyiv is, as you said, it's, it's very cold. It's been locked in ice basically for weeks. And so people are just, you know, really, really suffering through this, this period of, of having no heat in their apartments and trying to survive any way that they can. But it's been, it's been quite extreme. And, and just to give you a sense of the, at the moment, I just checked this today. Detec, which is the big private energy company in Ukraine, they have lost two thirds of their power generating capacity at the moment. So we're talking about gigawatts, gigawatts of power that is currently offline. So yeah, it's a very extreme circumstance and that's sort of what we're living.

[A]

Through now, Andrea, and I want to bring you in as well to just, you know, what is, what is the current approach right now in Ukraine or attitude towards these attacks? Is this just, just going to have to sort of grin and bear it for the next month or so or, or how are you perceiving the current situation?

[C]

Well, in general, the situation in the energy sector is difficult, pretty difficult, but it's still controlled because what we see that what Russians aim to do, so they want to shut down energy supply in big cities. And first of all, it's about Kiev, because Kiev is the capital. And so we, I mean analyst experts, we realized this in late October, in early November, considering the strikes, considering the facilities that Russians were taking. So that at that moment it was clear that Russians wanted to shut down energy, totally shut down energy supply in Kyiv. And it's. So that's the city with 3.5 million residents. So shutting down electricity and heat supply is not just a target for Russians because the main target is to pressure people psychologically to solve panic. And as Tim mentioned, so this year heat supply infrastructure is among the key targets for Russians. So they, they realize that they attack heat supply facilities when it's really cold. So that's actually the coldest winter in the past 20 years. So the temperature varies between 0 and 15 faring. And so they realized that millions of people may found themselves in the situation without heat supply and that may happen a humanitarian disaster. They actually attacked heat supply facilities in the past, but this time it's clear that those facilities are one of the key targets. Actually this year Russians have changed the tactics of their attacks because in the past, so in some months they attacked electricity, et cetera. In some months they attacked natural gas infrastructure, and in some months they attacked fuel infrastructure. And during this winter, actually simultaneously almost every day, they attack all of these facilities, electricity, natural gas, fuel. And on the one hand, in the past they didn't have so many missiles and drones. So in 2022, Russians launched 1900 drones on Ukraine. And last year they launched about 50,000 of drones. And this actually, this is the way how they managed to attack single small energy facility with 50 drones. And naturally it's pretty difficult to protect those facilities with air defense means because we need numerous number of this air defense means, however. So what should I mention that never in human history any energy system could even expect such severe attacks. And that's actually the fourth year of Russian energy terror, which started in September 2022. And on the one hand that's miracle that Ukrainian energy system is still surviving. And on the other hand, Ukrainian people, Ukrainian energy companies, they realize that that is a part of the war and if we lose energy supply, this will be very bad development for the war.

[B]

Thank you very much Andrew, and I'm so sorry about everything that's going on. My friend from Ukraine just told me that apparently Kyiv's largest residential one is the residential areas which is already been left without heating for a week now being informed that it's impossible probably to restore the heating until the end of winter. Again. Any update on that you could give us would be much appreciated because I think the Western allies of Ukraine should be aware of the scale of the coming but potentially humanitarian crisis and do everything possible to help. But I would love to also for you to comment on the analysis by Ukrainian conflict monitor that claims why Russia is absolutely terrorizing Ukraine and its energy system. It always stops short of fully taking the power system offline. He specifically mentions bearing an abrupt political decision in Moscow. The most realistic outlook is a sustained campaign style offensive throughout the winter intended to keep Ukraine permanently close to the age of systemic failure rather than trigger a single dramatic countrywide blackout event. How do you assess, is that indeed the strategy that Russia is pursuing or they're just failing? Maybe they'd like to fully leave Ukraine without any access to heating and energy supplies, but failing. Could you provide your outlook at this?

[C]

Well, in fact during the recent years, so we could say that that's true, that Russians attacked and damaged huge share of Ukrainian energy system like electricity or gas and they stopped attacks so before we lost energy supply at all. But it's very difficult to make an accurate assessment about Russian supply, intentions and plan. So on the one hand, what we see now that Russia's attacks are much more intensive. So comparing to previous years of attacks. So now they attack energy facilities from 5 to 20 times more frequently rather than they did in previous years. On the other hand, we should remember that more than half, normally more than half of electricity in Ukraine comes from nuclear power plants. And so Russians do not attack nuclear power plants and this infrastructure because it's hard to imagine what will be the outcome if they attack the facilities. So considering the fact that Russians that this year Russians change their tactics and they attack actually simultaneously all facilities, gas, natural gas, electricity and fuel. It seems to me that they want to pressure as much as they possible. So it's very hard to make an assessment if they change their mind about. So are they going to shut down electricity and gas supply across the country totally or not? But Considering the facilities they attack, they have been attacking in recent months, it looks like that among the targets for Russians is to achieve like a total blackout like in big cities. And first of all it's about the capital. But so the clear thing is that blackout is not something very long lasting that it's possible. So it may happen. But definitely we will renew power supply in 3, 4, 5, 7 days. However, so the current situation is critical because it's very cold and the fact that. So you mentioned this case that a huge district in Kyiv remained will remain without heating till the end of the winter. And it's actually more than 1,000 residential buildings and just what is 1,000? So during January for a few times after Russian attacks, 6,000 multi residential buildings remained without heating supply. And that's actually that was half of the Kiev. Yeah. So we would say that as of now more than 10% of Kyiv residents remain without heating when it's like 0faringate. So that still looks like committing humanitarian crimes and crimes against humanity.

[B]

100%. Thank you very much Andrea to provide an update on that. And I want to ask Tim, maybe you have a couple of comments on that. Again, do you agree with Andrea's assessment of Russia's strategy and overall, perhaps like how long can Ukraine sustain this? I also hear that water supply, supply is potentially an issue because of such freezing, such horrible cold. It may also lead to serious issues with water supply and without heating, electricity and water, that will be a full scale humanitarian crisis.

[D]

Yeah, well, I mean the water. I was speaking about this with some of my friends recently. Which one is worse? The blackout, the no heat or the days when we have water and I feel like electric and blackouts at this point. I think so many Ukrainians are just accustomed to navigating this challenge and we can talk about this more. But so many people have now little batteries or shops and restaurants have generators and there's this whole universe of distributed small scale electricity solutions that people have managed to patch together over the years. So that part of it feels a little bit more manageable. The heat is really a problem. I mean, you know, I know people who have icicles inside their buildings. I mean and you know I can manage. I put on another blanket. You know, I have friends who have fireplaces in their apartments. But of course there are, there are elderly people or people who are sick, young children, people who live at the top of tall apartment buildings where this is, it really is a humanitarian crisis and it's, it's extremely dangerous for many people. And then. Yeah, and Then water, as you mentioned, when the water gets turned off, that's when things to become kind of unlivable and you maybe have to move to a, you know, we've had to stay at hotels for a few nights or live at a friend's apartment for a few days or, you know, people are kind of grouping together and moving around to try to find solutions. I think for the heat. You know, one good thing I guess is that in, you know, I think we're about two thirds of the way, probably through the worst of the winter cold. I think by the end of February and starting into March it will still be cold, but not, not quite as like sub Arctic as we've been experiencing recently. So that the weather itself will help and then, yeah, we'll see what happens. But there's, you know, I think what's been so remarkable as I've been reporting on this energy war over the last two years has been, of course there are terrible stories and people who are very vulnerable. But every time I talk to, you know, individual people or companies or emergency responders or, you know, anyone who's touched by this story, which is, which is everyone, you know, so often what you hear are stories of resilience, people saying, you know, we've been through worse. I was at a maternity hospital a few weeks ago in Odessa that, you know, during the, they had extreme, prolonged black, you know, multi week blackouts happening there. And I spoke to one mother who had just given birth the day before in this maternity hospital and they had had no electricity at their house. They were struggling with power in the hospital. And I said, what are you going to do? Aren't you concerned? You have a one day old baby and how are you navigating this? And she said, look, I came from a different part of Ukraine that is currently under occupation. My husband's family is under occupation. We've had to flee our house multiple times. We're used to hearing explosions and shelling every single night. We can deal with a few days without power. And I think people have been through so much that if the intention of Russians in all of this is to break the spirit of the Ukrainian people, that strategy hasn't worked so far I think is very clear. So that's kind of the stage that we're at. But of course it's very stressful and uncomfortable for everyone. Definitely.

[A]

Yeah. Tim, I sort of want to follow up here because right now, coming to you from also frozen Washington D.C. it's not quite as cold as Kyiv, but I think we've had the coldest stretch, I think, in 150 years. It's barely been above freezing for the last 10 days. I just simply cannot imagine not having power. I mean, the city is. People are about to riot over just lack of being able to plow the streets effectively, but that's nowhere near what the situation that you all are in. And. And it strikes me that part of.

[D]

Well, we have that problem, too. Okay, well, the streets are plowing.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Shared suffering.

[C]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[A]

The D.C. method of just waiting for it to melt is not working out this year. But it strikes me that part of what Putin's strategy, if there is one besides just cruelty, is to create a ton of suffering, create a humanitarian crisis, to get the Ukrainians to realize that they ain't winning this war, that it's. That that time is not on your side. You gotta bend the knee and end this. What is the morale like in Kyiv and in Ukraine and the places that you go towards the war? Is there a sense like, God, we just gotta. We gotta end this, like, hopefully these negotiations, whatever Zelenskyy needs to do to just come to a deal? Or does this create the opposite effect of screw that guy and harden the resolve of the Ukrainian people to stand firm in this assault against not just their country, but their livelihoods and everything about Ukrainian society?

[D]

Sure. I mean, a few things. One is on your last point about strengthening people's resolve. I think that's absolutely true. And we've seen throughout this winter and other periods when there's been these energy crises, people bond together, they come to. Out to help their neighbors. There have even been, like, block parties, you know, people getting together to kind of dance and stay warm. There were a lot of people out driving their cars on the frozen lake last weekend and having kind of a party out there, you know, bringing food and water to infirm neighbors. If you have a restaurant that has a nice big generator outside, you know, letting people just come inside to warm up or charge their. Charge their phones, charge their things. So I think in a way that people might remember from some parts of the COVID pandemic, for example, where there was a kind of sense of camaraderie or shared suffering that actually really brought people together in a very beautiful way. And I see that all the time in Ukraine, as far as the bigger picture of how people are feeling about the kind of state of negotiations and the trajectory of the war, of course, people are exhausted by so many aspects of this, and energy is just one. But just. Still just living under constant threat of Drone and missile strikes, this is. Just happens almost every day. So it's normal, but that's very stressful. People are very concerned about the ongoing draft situation and don't want to see their sons and daughters, husbands, wives, everyone kind of being killed at the front anymore or, you know, facing conscription or, you know, it's this whole situation. I mean, it's just so incredibly stressful. So I do think that people want to find a solution. Giving up, you know, very large portions of Donbas that are currently unoccupied, which is, you know, the thing that Russia keeps bringing up as part of their proposal. You know, I don't have statistics on this, but I feel that this idea is still extremely unpopular and people don't want to give up any more territory than they already have. And I think this also just kind of comes down to what can we really expect from the US in terms of security guarantees? And there's so much uncertainty these days about that. That would maybe change the situation if that message was a little bit more clear. But, but, but, yeah, I think it's still a very tenuous situation. So it's just, it's very complicated for people, I think, still.

[A]

Andrea, your, your. Your thoughts on, on what, what is the morale and the mood right now in, in Ukraine?

[C]

So if talking about morale, I just, just remember that exactly four years ago, on February 5 or 6, President of Belarus Alexander Alchenko was given interview to Russian propaganda and journalist Solovyov, and he said that if Russia invaded Ukraine, the war would last for three or four days. And actually in a couple of weeks, we would see four years of this war. And probably no one believed that Ukraine could resist for four years. And sure it would be probably impossible without all the aid from Ukraine's allies, but talking about the morale, considering that Russia is trying to commit crimes against humanity, attacking heat supply when it's really cold. So that's actually talking about the morality morale. So that all that we need to know about Russian imperialism. And so Russia started this war and they tried to take donbas starting from 2014. So actually they were unable to achieve this aim for 12 years. And actually that's the reason why so many people are not ready to give up Donbass right now. And especially considering that the front line is very well equipped in this region. So just to step back. So this means that we would give some cards to Russians. So Ukrainians know this story very well because Russians, for 350 years, Russians tried to kill Ukrainians and to destroy Ukrainian nation. And so that just Ukrainians believe that they are Russians. So the morale is that actually so that the whole world could understand what the real Russian imperialism is. And Vladimir Putin is just an example of this Russian imperialism. And that's a miracle that Ukrainian energy system and the Ukrainian people and Ukraine still are capable and are ready to, to fight for independence, for freedom and for their nation.

[B]

And since we're on this topic, thank you very, very much, Andrea and Tim, obviously we'll have to discuss a little bit this issue of Russian imperial effort to subordinate Ukraine. And unfortunately, historically speaking, it's not the first one. A lot of online commentary blink important parallels between the golodomor when Russia tried during the Stalin's period to subjugate Ukraine hunger and the ongoing holodomor with essentially Moscow doing the same by magnifying the effects of the brutal cold. And just for our English speaking audiences, this nuanced difference there in the title refers to either death from hunger or death from cold. So maybe Andrea and Tim, you could comment on the continuity in this Russian effort that unfortunately historically continues and by the way failed because of the Ukrainian resistance to try and subjugate Ukraine. Why are such pronounced parallels essentially do, are we seeing basically the same Russia and do you think this like, how do you think Ukraine will continue fighting against this? Maybe. Let's start with Tim and then on to.

[D]

Sure, I, I guess what comes to mind for me thinking about that question of kind of historical precedent and Russia's kind of imperial strategy. If you think also just about the gas trade and the Nord Stream pipelines and everything that Russia has tried to do over the past several decades to make Europe and other parts of the world more reliant on its oil and gas exports and that we saw at the beginning of this war how easily that could be weaponized to cause economic disruption across Europe when they switched off the gas and the price went through the roof. And that was a strategy that was sort of a long time in the making and that that kind of exploitation was very intentional. And I think Europe has been trying hard in the last few years to pivot and find some way to get away from that, from those imports. And that effort is ongoing and probably involves a greater role for US Oil and gas, gas especially, to be imported to Europe so that there's a whole infrastructure build out there that has to come with how you kind of get out from that grasp. But I think what we've the bigger picture is just that energy has clearly been seen as a tool of coercion and a leverage point. By Russia both for Ukraine and for Europe for many years. And so this is, I think what we're seeing in this winter is just sort of like the fullest expression of that and this strategy. And it's worth mentioning that one reason why these strikes against Ukrainian energy facilities have been so effective is because of course, so many of them, these big power plants and stuff were all built in the Soviet period. There's a lot of information available to Moscow about the specific technical details of individual facilities and their locations and all of that. And so they're able to strike more effectively because they have that information. So, you know, so they sort of set this trap and, and now are seeing it through.

[B]

So Moscow is using these imperial legacies basically to try and.

[D]

Yeah, exactly.

[B]

Right, thank you. Yeah, Andrew.

[C]

Yeah. So the clear thing is that Russians intensively attack heat producing and supply infrastructure during this very cold winter. Because even in the cases when they. So they attacked Cohen turbo power plants, so that those are the facilities which produce both heat electricity and after a few times they attacked the facility, it didn't produce electricity. And they actually knew this well. But even besides using Shahid drones, they attacked local boiler houses which produced just heat. So that was the plan, that was the plan to attack heat producing facilities and to, to destroy any heat supply during this very cold winter. And discussing this topic one week ago, so I, I saw a very emotional, emotional post on Facebook posted by Chief Rabi of, of Ukraine. And so he, he posted a picture of a 19 year old lady who was a parishioner of, of Jewish community of Kyiv. And so the message was that actually she survived from holocaust, but she didn't survive from the Russian this so called denisification because she actually, she died because it was very cold in her apartment. That was about zero Farragut. She didn't survive this. So actually I think that's a very good description of what Russians do.

[A]

Maybe now we can dive into the energy infrastructure a bit. And the current challenge facing Ukraine, the energy infrastructure, the power plants are fixed targets. The Russians obviously know where they are. Many of them Soviet legacy. Andrian, maybe you could break down the difference between the heating structure and the electricity structures. You sort of just did that, but maybe you could break it down a little bit more. And I also want to ask you what steps are being taken right now to make this grid make Ukraine more energy resilient. We are in the fourth year of the war. This is not the first year that this has been a problem. Do you think enough action has been taken? And what Steps are really needed to build a degree of resiliency here. And so maybe you could talk a little bit, give us an overview of the structure and then what steps are needed to be taken. And then the same question over to you, Tim.

[C]

Well, what should I mention so that first of all that never in human history any engine system saw such a severe attack, such. And so never those energy facilities and energy systems were designed to be protected from such massive airstrikes as I mentioned, that comparing to 2022, Russians have increased production of their drones and missiles, especially, especially drones. And we have thousands and thousands and thousands of energy facilities across the country. And in some cases it's impossible to have some concrete protections, some bunkers to protect facilities because those facilities are so big. Like for example, if talking about nuclear power plants or huge telmet power plants. And we should remember that Ukrainian power system was based on big power plants. So more than half of electricity comes from nuclear power plants plants. Huge share of electricity came from big thermal power plants, hydropower plants. So these facilities, there actually are only two ways to protect those facilities. The first is air defense. But If Russians launch 50,000 of Shahid drones, we should imagine what should be the number of missiles, of air defense missiles. And I suspect that the availability of those missiles is much less. And another, another way to protect the power system is to attack Russian critical infrastructure because actually, because Russians understand only power, all the threats. So only pressuring Russians in terms Ukrainian air forces did it very well when we started attacking Russian refineries. And that was in summary, and that was response to Russian attack attacks on Ukrainian critical facilities in June last year. So it's impossible to protect the infrastructure with concrete bunkers, with air defense. And it's impossible to rebuild the energy system within such a short period of time. Sure, other countries, they take lessons from the war because we actually advanced greatly in protecting critical facilities. So in many cases we now can, we are capable, we know how to create shelters to protect critical facilities, even from Russian ballistic missiles. So that's the experience and I believe this, that's a great experience that European countries that us that some other countries take great lessons from this. But the problem is that we pay for this with our lives. And in some cases we lack. We sure Ukraine is grateful for all the aid the country receives, but in many cases we lack for example those air defense missiles. So any energy system, energy, any critical infrastructure can never be 100% protected from missiles and drones only. You have to demonstrate power. You have to be ready to attack the enemy and that's the best way to be protected.

[A]

Tim, maybe over to you. I mean, President Zelensky has sort of called out both the Europeans for not providing enough of their stockpiles of air defense. Also there's a demand, huge demand now for Patriot missile interceptors creating huge backlog air defense. Maybe you could, you know, how, how critical is that? And then also it does strike me that a lot of the resilience may have to be on the, on the individual level. So are there, are there things that you're seeing? Are there the purchasing of generators, distributed energy if there movements in that direction such that, you know, solar panels in winter are not as effective during the summer? I think they're about, I have to go clear my, the solar panels off my roof which are about one third as effective during the winter. But I'm curious if there's any movement on that direction to sort of say, okay, hell with relying on the state or big traditional energy providers like I'm going to put some solar panels on my balcony as we've seen in Germany, other places are there things like that and you know, feel free to dismiss it if that's a stupid question.

[D]

No, no, no, no, no, it's absolutely not. So on your first point, absolutely agree that air defense is critical and there's not enough of it. And you know, that's absolutely a major part of, and it parallels a similar issue which is that there also are major backlogs and shortages for gas turbines and auto transformers and all kinds of electricity related infrastructure. Because just look at what's happening with AI data centers in the US or in Europe and the electrification of the global economy writ large. There's only a handful of companies like Siemens and ge, Vernova and others that make these certain pieces of very large, large power equipment. And so there has been an effort underway in the past few years to push Ukraine to the head of the queue for those things. And that's something that European countries have been doing. That's something that USAID was doing before it was disbanded by the Trump administration at the beginning of last year, which did create a lot of bottlenecks for rebuilding Ukraine's energy system at that time. So that's another kind of critical supply chain bottleneck is also just infrastructure, supply itself and all of that hardware. I will say that on the question of kind of, you know, you know, resilience and individual responsibility, I mean, absolutely, I've, I've seen so many examples of people's houses, schools, hospitals, you know, restaurants, you know, whatever you Name it. And any type of building, you know, there are solar panels on roofs all over the place. There are solar panels in fields. So you drive through the countryside, you see them all the time. Dtech, this big energy company, is in the middle right now of building what is going to be when it's finished. One of the largest onshore wind farms in all of Europe, near Odessa, which is, it's only about 100km from the front line. And that's a really impressive project because they're building these things now. They did this very interesting deal involving the Dutch government, which gave them some kind of credit facility that involved Vestas, the wind turbine manufacturer, Andy Tech and the Ukrainian government all kind of working together to finance and supply this project. And I know because I visited this place and spoke to people there that it's much harder to, it's harder from a kind of targeting point of view and just from a cost basis, it just doesn't make sense to try to take down one single wind turbine with a missile or a drone that costs 10 or 100 times as much as the turbine does. So that type of distributed energy supply is part of the solution too. You know, when it comes to generators and you know, these little ecoflow batteries that people have in their houses and stuff, I mean, those things are all incredibly important. And I think if, if Ukrainians had not had the experience over the last few years of dealing with blackouts already and then this winter happened, the situation would be way worse because people are prepared in various small ways and have learned kind of strategies for, for dealing with that. And it's actually such an incredibly interesting view of what, you know, a totally different view of what kind of energy security or distributed energy looks like. You know, when you really break it down, it's sort of flipping. You know, Andrean mentioned the legacy in Ukraine has traditionally been these, you know, massive, you know, 5 or 6 gigawatt nuclear or thermal power plants. And now we've swung completely to the opposite direction with teeny tiny little batteries in everyone's apartments, which has helped, helped, but of course that's not a sustainable long term solution. So I think what, you know, the question now is what more can Ukraine's allies and also Ukraine itself do to better facilitate more projects like this wind farm getting some more, definitely more solar built, but also just, you know, more gas peaker plants, you know, just kind of reimagining this system in a much more distributed way because, you know, these massive old coal fired power plants that are getting destroyed. And I'm going to visit one on Monday actually that just got just completely obliterated last week. So I'm really interested to see how it looks. But they're very expensive to rebuild and Ukraine like many other countries has a goal to eventually phase out coal power altogether for various reasons. And even getting financing from banks or from foreign governments to rebuild large coal fired power generating facilities is very difficult these days for climate reasons and other. So I think that rebuilding some of that stuff is going to be tough. So now Ukraine has this opportunity to think about what does the new system look like. Is there a way that it could be rebuilt not only to serve Ukraine's own needs but to get back into the business of doing power export, which is what some something that Ukraine used to do before all this stuff started happening. And there's definitely an opportunity there. So I think in the future that's what the kind of medium term future looks like. But of course we have to get through the winter and the war. The most immediate priority for this energy system is just for these attacks to stop. Every time we have another attack it just sets the effort back so much and that's continuing to happen very, very often.

[B]

Thank you very much Tim and gloomy picture. Although I agree there is an opportunity there and I wanted to build on that to ask this broader question to both of our participants as to what like at the start of the war there were a lot of projects associated with Ukraine's reconstruction once the war ends. But it becomes I think more clear now that there's hardly any end in sight. There's a lot of peace negotiations ongoing. But clearly the Kremlin is committing at the moment to keep to a rising Ukraine. Ukraine. So where does this leave us, the situation? Do you think it's possible to perhaps reframe the reconstruction to refocus more on the current situation and try to begin it as the war is ongoing. To what extent do you think it's feasible? How does Nigerian reconstruction like the Tim just described factoring and what can west do to help more? I understand it's a big question, but it's inevitable that we start thinking about it. Andrea, maybe I'll start with you. You?

[D]

Yeah.

[C]

Actually at the very beginning of the war and months later we thought that we would wait till the end of the war and then we would start a big reconstruction renovation. But at some moment we realized that we didn't know the moment of the ending of the war. And the second part of the problem was that Russians were attacking Ukrainian energy sector and in terms of energy. At some moment we understood, we realized that we should start modernization of Ukrainian energy right now. So that wasn't just about rebuilding and repairing. That was about new. New capacities, new technologies and new decisions. So for example, so during the war, the, the huge scale war, Ukrainian companies launched better restoration system. So we didn't have these solutions before.

[B]

The.

[C]

The. The huge scalar wage. These decisions are very widely already spread across the the world. But so war actually was an impetus for. For this. For these facilities having in Ukraine Ukraine the war actually pushed. That was the impetus for some steps which were tied to market liberalization. Some. Some companies producing equipment for renewable power plants which were located in the east. Those were relocated to the west of the country. And recently so, so we've been producing some equipment different equipment for wind power plants. But remarkable thing that we actually now we produce wider range of the equipment for wind power plants. We actually can. Can build wind power plants by ourselves without relying on external supplies. Sure. The. The scale is still not. Not that huge as we would would like to have. So we had a great impetus on. For decentralized power generation. So in terms when talking about energy. So energy companies are not waiting for the moment when war ends. So energy companies realized that we shouldn't waste time and we have to go ahead in modification of energy sector right now because besides other. It's also about energy supply during this period of Russian energy draw. So we have to move forward. And that's. That's another thing which actually I believe that not many expected from Ukraine in this difficult times.

[B]

Thank you Andrew And Tim, do you have anything to add?

[D]

No, I think that covers it very well. I mean I think there's a lot of work that can be done starting now while the war is still ongoing to begin building some assets and reconstructing. I think there's a role that Western governments can play in helping Ukraine with market liberalization. That's the thing that Andrea just mentioned. Kind of getting the power market in Ukraine, sending the right price signals to the market, creating new types of insurance products that companies need to be able to invest while these difficult conditions are ongoing. And again just kind of continuing the supply of hardware and equipment and kind of material aid. All of that stuff is really important. And to go back to Andrea's point as well about the kind of counter attacks striking back inside Russia to you know, to continue, you know, support for that. There were British Storm Shadow missiles that were just used recently for the first time against Russian energy objects. U.S. and European intelligence and military hardware have been used to support, you know, those, those attacks over the last several months. And you know this, of course, this conversation ongoing in the U.S. treasury Department about sanctions against Russian oil and gas sector and even secondary sanctions on, on buyers China and India or others of Russian oil and gas. And I think that all of those things are very important components to this that are all part of this conversation. And I'm sure there's also more work that could be done to increase the amount of power transmission capacity between Ukraine and European countries to be able to import more power from Europe into Ukraine for the near term and then maybe turn that around in the future for exports.

[A]

Well, I think that's a great place to leave it. I want to thank both of you for joining us and for a really enlightening conversation. Wishing you all the best. Wishing you. Also warmer weather, hopefully sometime very soon and hope you can stay safe and get through what is a very cold, dark period. Thank you both.

[D]

Thank you, Max.

[C]

Thank you so much.

[B]

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[A]

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[B]

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