Ukraine’s air defenses strengthened as Russia plotting massive attacks on energy system - minister

That’s according to the Minister of Energy of Ukraine, German Galushchenko, who spoke on the air of the national telethon, Ukrinform reports.

"So far, there have not been such massive attacks as we saw last year. They attack the power system every day, it’s true, and they try to destroy as many facilities as possible, but in fact the scale we are talking about, as it was tentatively during the first such strike on October 10, with somewhere up to 100 missiles at the same time being launched to attack multiple electricity generation and transmission facilities, there were no such attacks so far. But I think that they are preparing for this," Galushchenko said.

He noted that the Ukrainian air defense system works much more efficiently today, being capable of shooting down the Russian Kinzhal missiles, which earlier caused significant damage to the Ukrainian energy system.

"We have much stronger air defenses now, and we received this year, thanks primarily to the efforts of our president, a large number of systems that we had not had at all. In particular, it’s the Patriot system, which we did not have. And l’ll just say that the Patriot allows us to shoot down Russian Kinzhal missiles, which we were not able to down before," the minister emphasized.

According to Galushchenko, it is impossible to restore all damaged power system facilities, but the government did its best to repair those damaged.

"We have gone through the most extensive repair campaign, which is still in progress, and this makes it possible to adequately provide generation through the winter," noted the minister.

Answering the question of how the Ministry of Energy prepared for the current winter, Galushchenko noted that the power system is currently coping, so only missile attacks can affect the situation.

"The system is going through the cold absolutely calmly. The only factor that can affect it is new attacks. And it’s not even the attacks as such, but the impact of the attacks on the power system. Because they may attack and use lots of weapons, but at the same time not achieve a critical impact on the power system. Many things have been done in order to strengthen the system as much as possible during winter," the minister assured.

Galushchenko also emphasized that the best support for the energy industry now is air defense capacities.

As reported earlier, on November 18, expert on missile and nuclear weapons Oleksandr Kochetkov reported that the stage of massive attacks on Ukraine is still ahead because the enemy has accumulated 950 missiles of various types and produced three times more drones than last winter.