Ukraine faces battle to rebuild
KYIV, Ukraine — Ukrainian efforts to stabilize some of the country’s battered electricity supply and make a dent in the seemingly endless task of demining swaths of the country offered a glimpse into the herculean task that lies ahead off the battlefield.
For the first time since Russia this past week carried out its largest assault on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, the national energy utility said Saturday it was again able to use planned, coordinated blackouts to keep the national grid stabilized rather than resorting to emergency power shutdowns.
The first traces of power were also restored to the recently reclaimed southern city of Kherson, which was left without heat, running water and electricity by Russian troops, as they blew up and tore down critical infrastructure before retreating to territory east of the Dnieper River.
“We know that it is very difficult for people because the occupiers destroyed everything before fleeing,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine said in his overnight address to the nation late Friday. “But we will connect everything, restore everything.”
Kherson’s reconnection to a Ukraine free of Russian occupying forces also marked a symbolic milestone Saturday morning as the first train from the capital, Kyiv, since before Russia’s invasion, pulled into the vital southern city’s station a week after Ukrainian troops wrested control back from the Russian occupiers.
Train 102 carried 200 passengers and was planned to be the start of regular service between the cities, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, a senior official in the president’s office, wrote in a Telegram post.
Videos posted on social media by Ukrainian officials showed the train departing Kyiv on Friday evening to cheers and applause from people on the platform as triumphant rock music blasted over the loudspeakers.
“This is our victory train!” Tymoshenko wrote. “Like this train, we will return to Kherson everything for a normal life!”
Zelenskyy received Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in Kyiv on Saturday, the British leader’s first visit since he took office last month. As Sunak arrived in Ukraine on the unannounced visit, the British government said it would add 50 million pounds, around $60 million, worth of defensive equipment, including 125 anti-aircraft weapons and anti-drone technology to counter Iranian drones deployed by the Russians.
Every place Russian forces have retreated during the war, they have left behind a trail of destruction and war crimes. It was true in the areas around Kyiv and across the northeastern Kharkiv region and is now the case in Kherson.
Across fields strewn with mines and at power plants under the threat of Russian missiles, workers with the Ukrainian utility company, Ukrenergo, have raced to fix damage caused by attacks intended to heap suffering on the Ukrainian people. But repairs made this week can be destroyed by a new Russian assault the next.
Ukraine’s government says nearly half of Ukraine’s energy grid has been knocked out by recent Russian missile strikes.