KYIV, Ukraine: Ukraine’s prime minister warned Tuesday that the country could be facing its toughest winter since the full-scale Russian invasion began, as airstrikes against the country’s beleaguered energy infrastructure intensify.
Russian attacks continue to hammer Ukraine’s energy generation capacity, leaving the country heavily reliant on its three functioning nuclear power stations and electricity imports from European Union countries.
“Energy resilience is one of our greatest challenges this year,” Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal told a news conference in Kyiv.
“We successfully got through what was essentially two and a half winters. We will get through three, with this upcoming heating season likely being just as difficult, if not the hardest,” he said.
Shmyhal said Ukraine’s government, helped by European countries, was urgently developing initiatives to decentralize its power generation, to make it less vulnerable to attacks. That includes expanding renewable power capacity — a development applauded by environmental groups.
Greenpeace has argued that a decentralized solar power network — which would be harder to damage with Russian missile and drone strikes — could rapidly help repair domestic capacity, and is urging the government to make a bolder expansion into green energy.
The group is calling for internationally backed investments worth nearly 4.5 billion euros ($4.9 billion) through 2030, focusing on renewable projects dominated by the solar photovoltaic sector.
“(Our) research says that the current targets, which the Ukrainian government set for reaching solar energy by 2027, could be increased at least fivefold. This is a very conservative evaluation,” Natalia Gozak, head of Greenpeace in Ukraine, told The Associated Press after the group opened an office in Kyiv on Tuesday.
According to the United Nations and the World Bank, Ukraine lost more than half of its power-generating capacity in the first 14 months of the war, with the situation continuing to deteriorate. Much of the country’s solar power generation was also lost because areas in the south of the country with more abundant sunlight came under Russian occupation.
The pre-war power mix in Ukraine was heavily dominated by traditional sources of energy, with coal, oil, natural gas and nuclear making up nearly 95 percent of the total, according to the two bodies.
Alexander Egit, an executive director at Greenpeace for Central and Eastern Europe, urged Western donor nations to back projects focused on renewable energy during and after the war.
“We expect billions of euros to be invested in Ukraine’s reconstruction by the European Union and beyond,” he said. “Greenpeace’s role is to advocate for decentralized renewable energy to ensure Ukraine is rebuilt as a modern, green, and independent nation.”

BERLIN: Germany on Tuesday insisted its move to launch border controls with its nine neighboring countries to stop irregular migrants is in line with the EU’s rules and not an attempt to go it alone.
Berlin would not take unilateral measures “that could harm the European Union,” Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said after Poland slammed the decision and the EU cautioned that border checks could only be introduced as an “exceptional” measure.
Faeser on Monday announced that border controls already in place with Austria, Poland, the Czech Republic and Switzerland would be extended to the borders with France, Luxembourg, Belgium, the Netherlands and Denmark for an initial six months.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk condemned the move as “unacceptable” and said Warsaw would “reach out to other countries affected by Berlin’s decisions for urgent consultations.”
But Faeser’s ministry said the step complied with national and European law and reflect “coordinated action within Germany as well as within the EU.”
Her ministry added in a statement that “Germany continues to rely on close cooperation with its neighboring countries, for example through joint patrols and joint police centers at the borders.”
A heated political row has flared within Germany about ways to limit the entry of irregular migrants at a time of rising public anger after several deadly attacks by suspected Islamist militants.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s coalition has come under intense pressure to address the issue, which has fueled the political rise of the far-right Alternative for Germany party (AfD).
The conservative CDU opposition party and its Bavarian sister party have demanded far tougher steps and on Tuesday walked away from a high-profile crisis “summit” on the issue with the government.
“The government is incapable of action and leaderless,” charged Friedrich Merz, the CDU’s likely candidate against Scholz in elections a year from now.
The CDU has demanded Germany declare a national “emergency” to allow for across-the-board rejections of undocumented migrants at the border — a proposal the government has rejected.
Faeser instead presented a plan under which police could temporarily detain asylum seekers already registered in other EU member states, while authorities work to speedily send them back to that country.
EU police have access to the Eurodac database that captures fingerprints and other biometric data of irregular migrants and asylum seekers.
The interior ministry said that under its proposal, German police who stop asylum seekers at the border would check Eurodac and, if the person is identified, detain them while initiating steps to speedily deport them.
Police would quickly “check whether detention capacity is available” and apply to a court for detention or to assign them to a fixed residence to “prevent the persons from going into hiding.”