By Alibala Maharramzade

During the rocket attack on Ukraine's energy infrastructure, Russia inflicted serious damage on 11 objects of 8 regions. 8.22 GW of power generation was destroyed. Let me add that Ukraine's total generation capacity is 42.8 GW. Calculating the damage inflicted on substations and distribution networks, official figures showed that 30% of Ukraine's total electricity system, or about 1/3, was temporarily disabled.

Generally, the energy stability of the country was not disabled despite the problem both in capital and other cities. In a word, Russia could not plunge Ukraine into darkness.  

According to Russian propaganda, the fact that Ukraine will no longer be able to export electricity to Europe is the main success of the "blackout" operation. However, the extent to which this is a "success" is debatable. Ukraine has temporarily lost its export capacity and will restore soon. We can assume that the missile strikes are political. Moscow has shown that it is "mature" enough to launch missile strikes on civilian infrastructure, and then compensate for its failure on the battlefield with the country's energy system.

Is it possible to completely destroy Ukraine's energy network in this way? Theoretically, it is possible if there is enough rocket. However, two points need to be taken into consideration here. 

First, nearly half of Ukraine's electricity generation is provided by nuclear power plants, and Russia will not risk and dare to hit them under any circumstances. The "objects", which were damaged during the recent attack belong to oligarch Rinat Akhmetov (his company DTEK controls about 80% of Ukraine's thermal power plants).

Secondly, it is no exception that Western countries will seriously think about equipping Ukraine with anti-missile systems from this incident. It was no coincidence that following Russia's missile attack, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the US Army, General Mark Miller, announced that his partners should help Ukraine to create a reliable missile defense system.

What is most interesting to me is how the economists in Russia, pretending to be intelligent, seriously comment on the economic damage that these missile attacks will cause to European countries. According to them, the economy of those countries will collapse since Ukraine is forced to stop selling electricity to Europe. In reality, Ukraine's role in Europe's energy balance was not so enormous that its temporary suspension of exports would cause a severe shock.

According to information of 'UkrEnerqo', Ukraine imported 486 MW of electricity to Hungary, 210 MW to Poland, and 93 MW to Romania last year. A total of 789 megawatts. However, Europe's total electricity consumption is 3,251,393,000 megawatts per year. It is not even possible to compare. Simply, Russian "economists" are making a fool of themselves and with this, they are trying to gain fictitious political grounds for their country's terrorist attack on civilian objects.

Alibala Maharramzada is  doctor of economic sciences, professor and director of Trade House Ukraine. 

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