Russian attacks on Ukrainian power plants are putting the local economy under pressure. In waves of attacks since March, around half of Ukraine’s electricity generation capacity has been destroyed. The Wall Street Journal reports on what this means for companies and citizens. Source here.
For the Ukrainian steel giant Interpipe, production costs have more than doubled, and due to power outages, the country’s second-largest cinema chain had to refund more than 80,000 tickets. Electricity prices for consumers have doubled since the beginning of the year. While the country used to export electricity, it now has to import energy.
The government in Kiev is urging citizens to use as little electricity as possible, Companies receive subsidized loans to purchase generators in order to be as independent as possible.
But with winter approaching, the situation threatens to become increasingly difficult. “We are still operating, but costs have increased by one and a half times,” said Interpipe CEO Andriy Korotkov. A further increase in electricity prices would make Interpipe uncompetitive on international markets.
Solomiya Bratakh runs a milk and cheese factory – she too worries every day about energy for her cooling systems. “We wrote a business plan – there was a five-year development strategy – but now we are planning from one day to the next,” she says. In order to cover rising energy costs, she also had to increase the price of her products. But she does not want to back down: “We are not prepared to give up.”
The most important news of the day:
- Satellite images of the Russian Plesetsk missile silo in the Arkhangelsk regiontaken on September 21, indicate that a test of a nuclear-capable RS-28 “Sarmat” intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) appears to have failed. More here.
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has arrived in the United States for a visit that may be decisive for the further conduct of the war. At the beginning of his stay, he visited an artillery ammunition factory in the state of Pennsylvania. More here.
- The Kremlin has most likely transferred sailors from the crew of the Admiral Kuznetsov, the Russian military’s only aircraft carrier, and sent them to the front in Ukraine. According to analysts of the OSINT project “Moklasen”, at least some of the ship’s crew members formed the so-called mechanized frigate battalion. More in the live blog.
- In the dispute over access to waters around the Crimean peninsula, Ukraine and Russia engaged in a war of words before the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague on Monday. Ukraine’s representative, Anton Korynevych, accused Russia of thinking it was above international law and could “play by its own rules”.
- The representatives of Russia are excluded from the commemorations of the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi extermination camp Auschwitz-Birkenau. The Auschwitz Museum announced this on Monday and justified the exclusion of the Russian representatives by saying that such a presence would be “cynical” in view of the war in Ukraine.
- A successful Ukrainian attack on a Russian ammunition depot in Toropets in the Tver region last week is said to have destroyed ammunition supplies for two to four months of war. This was reported by Andriy Kovalenko, head of the Ukrainian Center for Combating Disinformation of the National Security and Defense Council.
- According to local authorities, 16 people were injured in a Russian air strike on the southern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhia. According to Ukrainian media reports, it was the first time that the city was bombarded with so-called glide bombs.
