Kiev Introduces Rolling Blackouts and Stops Exporting Electricity to Europe as Western Media Still Claims Russia is the One Suffering
by Brian Shilhavy
Editor, Health Impact News
The fighting in Ukraine has escalated this week, as Russia has reportedly started a new bombing campaign against key infrastructures in many cities inside Ukraine as a response to an alleged bombing of a key Crimean bridge.
If one only gets their “news” from the Corporate Media, it would appear that this is an act of desperation by Putin in a failing war for Russia.
As of the time of writing this article, here are the headline stories in the U.S. Corporate Media via Google News:
One of these headlines is from The Independent in the UK:
If you live in “Western Europe,” does this editorial represent your sentiment on this war? Are you prepared to “make the sacrifices” this winter to not be “held hostage by Russia?”
Here are what should be the real headlines for the past few days as this war quickly escalates, but that the Corporate Media is either not reporting or only reporting as non-headline news.
First, Kiev’s power grid was so badly damaged in these recent attacks, that the capital city of Ukraine is now going through rolling blackouts, and the Ukraine Energy Ministry announced yesterday that it had to stop exporting electricity to Europe, as energy supplies for Europe are quickly disappearing:
Energy Ministry: Ukraine forced to stop exporting electricity to Europe
Russia’s mass missile strike on Ukraine that struck heat generation and electrical substations on Oct. 10 forced Ukraine to stop exporting its electricity to the European Union in order to stabilize its own grid starting Oct. 11, the Ministry of Energy said.
The ministry didn’t specify a date for export renewals.
Ukraine’s electricity system was integrated into the European grid in March to cut off the country from its electricity dependency on Russia, and Belarus in the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion.
“Russia continues to carry out energy terror against Ukraine and intensifies energy pressure on the European Union,” Energy Minister Herman Halushchenko said. (Source.)
Kiev introduces rolling power blackouts
Residents of the Ukrainian capital and Kiev Region will experience power outages of up to four hours under a new schedule of rolling blackouts introduced by the grid operator.
The measure was introduced on Tuesday and is aimed at “balancing the power system and avoiding large-scale blackouts,” privately-owned energy company DTEK announced on Tuesday. It cited instructions it received from the national transmission system operator, Ukrenergo.
The rotating outages will affect both industrial consumers and regular citizens, and was introduced after a massive Russian attack on Ukraine’s infrastructure on Monday. Ukrenergo called on people to dial down their use of electricity to decrease the load on the grid. On Monday evening, it claimed there was a 26.5% drop in consumption in the capital and surrounding region, compared to an average autumn day.
The company urged users to keep consumption low during peak evening hours, and said it ordered operators in Kiev, Chernigov, Zhitomir, and Cheboksary to introduce rolling blackouts, which will be in force for several days.
Issues with basic utilities such as electricity and water were reported by Ukrainian media in many parts of the country following the strikes.
Moscow states that the strikes were in retaliation for what it described as a series of “Ukrainian terrorist attacks” on Russian infrastructure. Key facilities were damaged in nearly a dozen Ukrainian regions, according to Kiev. (Source.)
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