As the winter approaches and the continued attacks on infrastructure Ukraine’s residents may be in for a bad winter….

Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said Russian missile strikes across Ukraine last week disabled nearly half of the country’s energy infrastructure, leaving millions of Ukrainians without power.

“Unfortunately Russia continues to carry out missile strikes on Ukraine’s civilian and critical infrastructure. Almost half of our energy system is disabled,” Shmyhal said on Friday, according to Reuters.

Russia previously avoided large-scale strikes on energy infrastructure in Ukraine but began such operations in early October after the truck bombing of the Kerch Bridge, which connects the Russian mainland to the Crimean peninsula.

Russian strikes on Ukraine appeared to wane on Saturday and Sunday, but massive damage has been done. Authorities in the capital Kyiv warned Friday that they are preparing for all scenarios, including the “complete shutdown” of the city’s power system.

POLITICO reported last week that Ukraine has warned its Western backers that it may not be able to recover if Russia launches more strikes on its energy infrastructure. The report said Kyiv is worried it might not have enough replacement parts to bring power and heat back online and is looking to the West for assistance.

Ukrainian officials said Saturday that they were starting a voluntary evacuation from the southern city of Kherson, which Ukraine recently recaptured after Russia withdrew from the area. The officials said the evacuations were starting due to the damage to the city’s energy infrastructure.

In an effort to ease concerns, the Ukrainian Energy Ministry said that it has control of the power grid despite the Russian strikes and said there was no need for people to panic.

(antiwar.com)

There is a growing concern by some that the nuclear problems will multiply….

Powerful explosions shook Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region, the site of Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, the global nuclear watchdog said Sunday, calling for “urgent measures to help prevent a nuclear accident” in the Russian-occupied facility. Rafael Mariano Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said two explosions—one Saturday evening and another Sunday morning—near the Zaporizhzhia plant abruptly ended a period of relative calm around the nuclear facility that has been the site of fighting between Russian and Ukrainian forces since Russia invaded in February. Fears of a nuclear catastrophe have been at the forefront since Russian troops occupied the plant early in the war. Continued fighting has raised the specter of a disaster, the AP reports.

In renewed shelling close to and at the site, IAEA experts at the Zaporizhzhia plant reported hearing more than a dozen blasts within a short period Sunday morning and could see some explosions from their windows, the statement said. Several buildings, systems, and equipment at the power plant—none of them critical for the plant’s nuclear safety—were damaged in the shelling, the IAEA said, citing the plant’s management. Still, Grossi said reports of the shelling were “extremely disturbing.” He added: “Whoever is behind this, it must stop immediately” and appealed to both sides to urgently implement a nuclear safety and security zone around the facility. “As I have said many times before, you’re playing with fire!” Grossi said.

Russia has been pounding Ukraine’s power grid and other key infrastructure from the air, causing widespread blackouts for millions of Ukrainians in frigid weather. That has left Ukrainians without heat, power, or water as snow blankets the capital, Kyiv, and other cities. Ukraine’s state nuclear power operator said Russian forces were behind the shelling of the Zaporizhzhia plant. Energoatom said in a Telegram post Sunday that the targeted and damaged equipment in the facility is consistent with Kremlin’s strategy “to damage or destroy as much of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure as possible as” winter sets in. Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov, however, blamed Ukrainian forces, claiming they shelled the power plant twice Sunday. He said two shells hit near the power lines supplying the plant with electricity.

Just another in the series of problems that apparently only the West can solve…..

So what will the answers to these problems be?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”