Due to the ongoing military operations and constant attacks on the energy infrastructure of Ukraine, about 80% of the country's energy facilities have been damaged or destroyed. This situation poses one of the biggest threats to the state — winter frosts, which can be fatal for many Ukrainians.
The Sunday Times writes about it.
With temperatures below zero, Ukraine is threatened with deadly winter frosts. Every day, hundreds of thousands of people will spend up to six hours in the dark without heat and water, the publication notes and cites the words of the former head of the recovery agency, Mustafa Nayem, who accuses the government of deliberately delaying the implementation of the energy protection project.
According to Nayem, the government blocked the allocation of money for the project due to personal vested interests. His team suspects that the project was delayed because the prime minister's office did not pay bribes to officials "who hold the purse in their hands", moreover, the Ukrainian government did not pay the contractors and they stopped working.
Serhiy Sukhomlin, who replaced Nayem, said that the contractors expected "too much profit" and that his department is now reviewing the contracts with them. Some defenses are being "redesigned" to cut costs, he said.
The contractors, for their part, said they were trying to continue building the bunkers, but without government funding they were forced to take out loans to finance the minimum amount of work to continue construction, and that the structures were still far from complete.
Currently, to prevent the collapse of its energy system, Ukraine relies on "level one and two" defenses of British-supplied gabions - primitive mesh cells filled with crushed stone, large concrete protective arches, and a number of modern air defense systems provided by western partners.
