Live updates: Russia’s war in Ukraine- QHN

Across Ukraine, power engineers are engaged in their daily battle to restore electricity to homes and public buildings after Russian missile and drone attacks — but they are also tackling much longer outages.

In the far north of Ukraine, the villagers of Tsirkuny in Kharkiv region have electricity for the first time since the day Russian forces invaded Ukraine in February. The regional power company said 100 consumers in the village are back online.

“As a result of hostilities, the damage to power grids and equipment here is enormous,” the company said. “Transformer substations, poles, wires are damaged. The work is also complicated by the large amount of work on demining the territory. We have already replaced two power transformers, which allowed us to supply the first consumers. Another 10 transformers need to be replaced.”

Elsewhere, more recent damage is being tackled.

Oleksandr Starukh, head of the Zaporizhzhia military administration, told a briefing that the situation in the region is currently difficult. 

“Our power engineers have managed to restore the basic vital systems. People have warm radiators, water supply, the sewage system works. Electricity is supplied according to schedules,” Starukh said.

The energy crunch is exacerbated by the lack of nuclear generation at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, where all six units are out of operation. “They are in partially cold and partially hot shutdown mode,” Starukh said.

The plant has been occupied by the Russians since early March. Russian-appointed officials have repeatedly declared plans to connect the plant to the Russian grid through Crimea.

Earlier Monday, state electricity company Ukrenergo said that “during the whole night, enemy UAVs have been trying at breaking through to power facilities across the country.”

Several facilities had been hit, it said, with the most difficult situations in the central, eastern and Dnipro regions.