Ukraine keeps power imports high, sees no exports after Russian strikes

Ukraine is keeping electricity imports high and not planning to export power on Monday after Russian attacks on the energy sector, the energy ministry said.

Ukraine is keeping electricity imports high and not planning to export power on Monday after Russian attacks on the energy sector, the energy ministry said. Russia attacked Ukrainian generating and transmission facilities last week and over the weekend, causing blackouts in many regions.

"For the current day, electricity imports are forecast at 14,887 megawatt hours (MWh). No exports are expected," the ministry said in a statement. Ukraine imported 14,900 MWh on Sunday and 3,300 MWh a day before the first in the latest wave of attacks on its power sector on March 22.

Emergency power outages were introduced in Ukraine's port of Odesa on Monday after a Russian air attack damaged one of the high-voltage facilities there, Ukraine's top energy provider DTEK said in a separate statement. It said that to reduce the load on the network electric transport would not operate in the city and industrial consumption was also limited.

The Ukrainian military says air defences destroyed eight out of nine drones launched by Russia overnight. Most of the drones were destroyed in the Odesa and Mykolaiv regions. Debris from a falling drone sparked a fire at a power facility, which was promptly put out, the Odesa city administration said.

"The enemy has started systematically hitting the city's energy infrastructure. The situation is bad. They're hitting civilian targets," Mykolaiv's governor Vitaly Kim told national television. After the largest attack on the Ukrainian power system since the beginning of the war on Friday, most of border city Kharkiv and parts of Zaporizhzhia region are without electricity.

"We continue to have problems with energy supplies to those regions that are close to the battle line - these are 7,500 consumers," said Zaporizhzhia governor Ivan Fedorov. Power grid operator Ukrenergo said 401 settlements were without power as of Monday morning across Ukraine.

UNDERGROUND GAS STORAGES State-run energy firm Naftogaz said on Sunday that one of Ukraine's underground gas storage facilities was attacked this weekend and the energy ministry said on Monday the situation there was under control.

"A fire and a gas leak have been contained at a gas facility in the Lviv region that was attacked by the enemy," the ministry said. "The situation is under control. There is no threat to gas supplies to consumers."

Most of Ukraine's gas storage capacity is in the west of the country and it is able to store around 30 billion cubic metres of gas.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)