NASA has unveiled satellite images of the Ukrainian capital plunged into darkness by power cuts linked to the bombings of Russia on their infrastructure.
‘Russia will never achieve its goal of plunging Ukraine into total darkness,’ British outlet told Sky News the spokeswoman for the Ukrainian private energy operator DTEK. “With each attack, electrical engineers are more courageous and creative in finding solutions to keep the system running,” she said.
But these quick, on-the-job repairs show their limits. Satellite images of Kyiv at night, provided by Nasa to Sky News, show light levels in Ukrainian urban areas have halved since October, leaving millions of Ukrainians without electricity – or heat, no light – as winter and its sub-zero temperatures set in.
Since the attack on the Crimean bridge in October, Russia has increased its salvoes of missiles on Ukraine’s civilian energy infrastructure. Thus, all electricity, gas and coal-fired power stations were damaged, as well as 40% of the high-voltage network, according to the Prime Minister. In mid-December, Russian President Vladimir Putin also assured that he intended to continue his strikes against the country’s energy infrastructure.
Dark residential areas
Sky News, which obtained these pictures, focused on the city of kyiv. The first high-definition image provided by the American space agency before the start of the war, in January 2022. On this one, we can see kyiv shining brightly.
Then on two other more recent images (dating from November 2022), we see the capital largely darken. Only a few streets in the center of the city (around Maidan Square) still seem relatively well lit. In the rest of the city, only a few streets here and there have lights.
“Weather conditions slow down repairs”
Some residential areas such as Troieschyna, northeast of the city, are almost completely blacked out, as national operators have opted to keep electricity in the center of the capital as a priority.
These NASA images reveal that since the first wave of attacks in early October, part of the infrastructure has been repaired and partially restored by Ukrainian services. More recent attacks, however, seem to have pushed the country’s energy system to the brink of collapse. End of november, six million households, for example, were left without electricity for several days, according to President Volodymyr Zelensky.
“The situation is made even more complicated by the weather conditions which are slowing down the repair work,” said Volodymyr Koudritskiï, head of the national operator Ukrenergo in mid-December.
NASA images also show that several medium-sized Ukrainian cities have had their lights reduced by half. Images that even the energy infrastructure of towns like Lyiv, yet far from the front line, have been deliberately targeted. In Kherson, the Ukrainian energy infrastructure was “virtually destroyed” during the withdrawal of Russian forces on December 9 and the situation is “complicated” in Odessa, targeted by strikes.
