(Reuters) – Ukraine’s energy minister, reflecting on Saturday on what he has portrayed as the largest repairs campaign to a power system in modern history, expressed confidence the country could meet its generation needs during the cold months.
Asked in a televised interview whether the country would be able to meet its goal of providing 1.7 gigawatts of generation capacity by the heating season, German Galushchenko said, “We will manage to do it.”
He said he could not give details now but that the country was adding power in ways it had never done before. “I am very confident that the symbiosis of all actions will lead to the fact that we will be able to reliably ensure supplies during the heating season.”
Missile and drone attacks on energy infrastructure following Russia’s full-scale invasion last year caused sweeping blackouts and water outages for millions of Ukrainians during the winter.
Galushchenko said that while the scale of any new Russian attacks were hard to predict, Ukraine would be able to carry out repairs.
(Reporting by Nick Starkov in Kyiv and Elaine Monaghan in Washington; Writing by Elaine Monaghan; Editing by Alistair Bell)
