Electrical trams are working once more in Kyiv, and electrical scooters dot the sidewalks. With curfew prolonged to midnight, the streets are shiny and buzzing. Transportable mills, practically unattainable to seek out as they flew off the cabinets in December, are being bought at half worth.
The Kremlin’s marketing campaign to interrupt the Ukrainian will to combat by turning winter right into a weapon and knocking out energy finally failed — however there have been moments when it appeared that each one is likely to be misplaced.
The darkest week in an extended, chilly season got here in mid-November, when Russian missiles streaked in from three instructions, bearing down on Ukrainian energy vegetation.
Power officers, gathered in a secret bunker in Kyiv, watched alarms flash on the massive screens mapping the nation’s vitality grid as important substations, thermal energy vegetation and hydroelectric services all went darkish. Then one thing occurred that they had by no means seen earlier than over weeks of bombardment: All the nation’s nuclear energy vegetation had been thrown into blackout.
Inside seconds, management rods positioned above reactors at Ukraine’s three working vegetation dropped into cores to soak up neutrons and cease the chain reaction that would result in a meltdown. The reactors, which give 50 % of the nation’s vitality, went offline.
On the similar time, Russian missiles and drones severed Ukraine’s connection to the European grid, a important supply of vitality that has helped Ukraine forestall collapse in its personal grid.
On a continent of sunshine, Ukraine was an island of darkness. Tens of millions had no warmth. Traces shaped at previous wells as individuals lugged jugs of water to pitch-dark flats in Kyiv. Web service went down for a lot of. Officers mentioned mass evacuation plans.
“These had been a few of the most tough days,” Ukraine’s vitality minister, Herman Galushchenko, stated in an interview.
Given the depth of the disaster — outlined in additional than a dozen interviews with senior vitality officers, utility employees, authorities officers and army intelligence — it’s all the extra outstanding that as winter has launched its icy grip, Ukraine’s energy grid not solely survives however was even ready, in early March, to provide surplus vitality for the primary time in months.
