Volodymyr Kudrytskyi / IA “Center for Investigative Journalism”
This weekend, President Zelensky informed us all of important information that almost all thermal power plants in Ukraine are damaged, and the winter will be very difficult.
But there is one nuance: unfortunately, almost all large thermal power plants (about 10 in total) were damaged already during the winter of 2022-2023. Then almost all thermal power plants were damaged again in 2024. And in 2025. The last round of damage to all large thermal power plants was last winter 2025-2026.
So there is nothing new here. And the main question we need to ask the authorities is how much new decentralized generation has been built over these years to compensate for the loss of these giant facilities that the enemy has destroyed and damaged repeatedly? After all, to attack, say, 1500 containers with gas piston power plants scattered across Ukraine, the enemy would have to spend significantly more effort than attacks on 10 large objects. Moreover, the cost of one container is 2-3 times less than the cost of a Russian missile, and the effectiveness of Shaheds by SOU is constantly being reduced.
The numbers are very sad.
In last year’s contest to build new generation, in which Halushchenko tried to manually influence the results, only 78 MW will be built, and not all stations have been launched yet. As of July 2026, about 700 MW of new gas generation is operating in the power system.
This is with a deficit of up to 7000 MW last winter.
This failure in building new generating capacities is a direct consequence of lost time while the Mindich group plundered the energy sector in 2022-2025. It is also a direct consequence that even after Mindichgate, the authorities deliberately decided not to replace the corrupt officials in Energoatom, NCREC, and other large energy companies.
With such a “contingent,” attracting the necessary volume of investments in gas generation from private companies and Western donors is simply impossible. This is not to mention the change of Government 3 months before the heating season, which was done only to remove Fedorov.
Therefore, broadly speaking, all that can realistically be done before winter is to try to connect the power plants donated by partners to the power grid, which are still standing idle. Maybe an additional 100-200 MW will be added out of the 7000 needed.
And hope for a warm winter.
Photo: Ukrenergo
