The battle for The electricity supply It has become an essential component of The hybrid war Modern, one where the line between civil infrastructure and military objective is blurred. To the Attack thermal plants Or transmission lines, Russia not only seeks to disable the network, but also sow panic, break morality and destabilize economic life. Now Ukraine has materialized an unpublished plan to combat winter in the war: a 200MEGAVATIOS hide and seek.
Light as an act of resistance. Ukraine goes into his fourth winter of war after have survived to three seasons of forced blackouts For Russian bombings, with engineers repairing under -fire substations and millions of citizens supporting cold and darkness.
However, this time the country is committed to An unpublished resource: A network of huge American design batteries, distributed in six secret and conceived locations to offer an energy mattress when the network is attacked. Its joint capacity of 200 megawatts It is equivalent to illuminating for two hours about six hundred thousand homes, enough to maintain urban life while the technicians restore the service.
The heart of a war system. The Six battery parkslocated around kyiv and the Dnipropetrovsk region, are integrated directly into the national electrical system. They do not replace centrals, but allow to cover the sudden fall of thermal plants or substations achieved by missiles and drones.
Its modularity is key: each block can be isolated and replaced without compromising the whole, which reduces vulnerability to direct attacks. Ukraine protects these enclaves with anti -aircraft defenses and the secrecy of its location, aware that a single Russian impact could cause a chain blackout.
Energy storage systems in Ukraine
Moscow’s offensive. From the beginning of the invasion, more than half Of the Ukrainian generating capacity it has been useless by bombing against thermal plants, coal mines and gas networks. Even nuclear energy, which previously supported most of the system, has been diminished: the largest central is under Russian control and out of operation.
The Kremlin strategy seeks to bend the population leaving it without light or heating in the middle of winter. Last year failure Thanks to Technicians ingenuitybut the Mass production Shahed drones predicts attacks more intense and prolongedcapable of saturating Ukrainian defenses.
Energy as a weapon. kyiv has also brought the war to the energy field. His drones have Beef Russian refineries And they left tens of thousands of citizens without supply In Belgorodas retaliation for the devastation of your electricity grid.
In negotiations sponsored by Washington, he was talking about A non -aggression pact about energy infrastructure, but the ATaques have resumed As the cold approaches. In this pulse, electricity is not only a vital resource, but a strategic weapon that both sides use to erode the moral of the adversary.
West as a support. The battery network is part of a 140 million dollar program funded by the Private energy DTEK and Ukrainian banks, with teams supplied by the American Fluence. Washington and Berlin reinforce in turn The air shield With patriot systems, although kyiv insists that protection remains insufficient.
He Renewable development As wind and solar add resilience: its dispersion prevents a single attack from demolishing the entire generation, and batteries balance the natural intermittency of these sources.
History lessons. If we expand the frame, the use of energy as a battlefield is not, much less, exclusive to Ukraine. In World War II, Allied bombings On German Ruhr hydroelectric plants, they sought to paralyze the industrial production of the third Reich, and in Iraq, both in 1991 and 2003, the coalition headed by the United States Deliberately destroyed electric plants to disorganize Sadam Husein’s forces.
Even in Kosovo, in 1999, NATO used graphite bombs that disabled transmission networks without destroying the structures, a reminder that light can be extinguished for military purposes without spilling direct blood. In all cases, cutting electricity meant hitting the heart of the resistance of a country, weakening its productive capacity and, above all, its morals. In Ukraine, possibly aware of history, they prepare to resist what in other wars were decisive.
Light as a symbol. If you want also, electricity in Ukraine has become a resistance metaphor. Keeping the lamps on kyiv, járkov or leopolis means demonstrating that neither missiles nor blackouts will break everyday life. In a conflict where entire cities are tried to turn off, the Ukrainians have made light an act of challenge and faith.
Image | Ministry of Defense of UkraineDTEK / Facebook
GIPHY App Key not set. Please check settings