Sitting on a gondola, two employees attach a cable to a large mast.
Farther away, others are busy on the ground around several large, broken copper rods as they repair a Ukrainian power plant recently hit by Russian strikes.
The plant operator, who showed some journalists, including those from AFP, around its premises on Thursday, asked them not to reveal the name of the place where this thermal power plant is located for security reasons.
Russia has been conducting repeated strikes against Ukraine’s energy infrastructure for more than two weeks, resulting in the destruction of at least a third of the grid as winter looms.
As a result, and in order to avoid overloading the distribution network, daily supply disruptions of several hours have been imposed in some regions, in particular in Kyiv, for the past few days.
Authorities there said on Friday those cuts must be increased to “unprecedented” levels.
And Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Friday that around four million people across the country were affected by the power outages: not only in and around Kyiv, but also in the Zhytomyr, Poltava, Rivne, Kharkiv, Chernihiv, Sumy, Cherkassy and regions Kirovograd.
– Protection against strikes –
Every time a part of the web is hit, the station staff sets about repairing it.
At the plant visited by AFP, which is operated by the private Ukrainian electricity company DTEK, the strikes mainly affected outdoor equipment, particularly transformers and distribution lines.
“We are facing such damage for the first time,” said an employee, Pavlo. The facility had been hit twice by rockets and then a third time by an Iranian-made suicide drone.
“Renovations have been underway for more than two weeks,” he added.
“We don’t know how long it will take. It depends on the material we have to source, deliver, install… It’s a long process.
“There are difficulties because the damaged equipment is unique – it’s difficult to find the same parts and making new ones is very time-consuming,” he said.
And every time the air raid sirens go off, they have to get the tools down and go into the dugout, deep in the bowels of the factory.
This attack lasted about an hour and a half. To pass the time, workers played cards or dominoes, or checked the latest news on their cell phones.
Or they just caught up on sleep.
“We work with the absolute minimum number of employees,” said Pavlo.
“We’re trying to minimize potential casualties,” Pavlo explains, adding that one DTEK employee has already been killed and 11 others injured in the strikes that have been targeting them since October 10.
