SHCHASTIA, Luhansk Oblast – When a military shell hit the Luhansk Power Plant in Shchastia, a town of 13,000 residents, in mid-September, it led to the electricity blackout for about 1 million people, including local miners who stuck under the ground as the elevators stopped.
It took
several hours to extinguish the fire and resume the work of the power plant
that used to supply as much as 75 percent of the electricity that Luhansk
Oblast needs. Ukrainian troops, involved in fighting against the Russia-backed
separatists, increased the defensive measures at the plant, fearing that the
rebels may try to capture the strategically important electricity producer
located just in about one kilometer from the frontline.
“It’s obvious that those who control it (the plant) can decide where to supply the electric energy,” Andriy Morozov, plant’s shift leading technician told the Kyiv Post.
Another heavy
shelling happened on Oct. 9, but the workers managed to fix the damages without
stopping the plant. Six of them, who travelled to their shift by bus, were
wounded by pieces of shell that day.
“Before
the war started there were six energy blocks functioning here and we were
producing up to 1 million megawatts of energy in the winter time,” Morozov said. “But now we have only two energy blocks at work and they
function not at the full scale.” He added that the plant, owned by
Ukraine’s richest man Rinat Akhmetov through his DTEK energy holding, may stop
if it will be short of coal for burning or wires won’t get fixed, and resuming
the work will be very complicated technically.
For now, the
power plant in Shchastya works like an “energy island,” supplying all
it produces to the nearby customers. Overall, the Donbas
is facing a shortage of energy supplies as the winter is coming.
In order
to enter the Luhansk Power Plant, one needs a permission from an officer from
the Aidar, a volunteer battalion, who has a military pseudonym Beret. Initially
the plant workers were afraid of the armed men wandering around the territory,
but later they got used to them as well as to the sounds of shelling that are
heard in Shchastia every day.
Morozov
showed the Kyiv Post burned electric generators and destroyed wires and a group
of technicians trying to repair them. He said the fighting also destroyed 16
out of 20 electric wires and cut off the power plant from the nation-wide
electricity system yet in July.
Morozov
says it takes just several days to fix the wires, but it’s a fatally dangerous
work. Hennadiy
Moskal, the governor of Luhansk Oblast, told the Kyiv Post that five workers were killed
and three were wounded while restoring the electric communications. “Now
they will work only if safety is assured,” Moskal said.
Morozov added
that five workers of his shift quit job and left, being concerned about their
safety. However, the majority of up to 2,000 employees at the power plant keep
working despite the dangers. “It used to be scary in the beginning, but
people get accustomed to everything,” he said.
After fighting
destroyed the bridge over Tepla river near Shchastia in June, it became impossible
to supply the plant with coal produced at DTEK mines in Sverdlovsk and Rovenky.
So the company now has to deliver the coal from its mines in Russia’s Rostov region
through Kharkiv Oblast in Ukraine. These supplies are very limited and can
provide the plant with the coal for three days of work at most.
“Every
day we receive about 40 carriages of coal and all of them are being burned
almost immediately,” said Morozov, showing a small pile of coal at the
plant’s storage. Anton Kovalishyn, spokesman of DTEK, said the plant gets some
2.5-5.8 tons of coal daily from mines in Rostov with the monthly need of 120,000-124,000
tons with two energy blocks working. According to the Kyiv Post sources, DTEK
purchased 1 million tons of coal from Russia this fall.
At a
current limited capacity, Luhansk Power Plant can’t cover the needs of both
parts of the oblast, one controlled by the separatists and another by the
Ukrainian army. This led to energy blackouts last month for up to 12 hours in
Severodonetsk and Lysychansk, two major cities with a combined population of
210,000. But when the fighting destroyed the wires connecting the plant with rebel-held
areas like Luhansk, Alchevsk, Antratsyt and Sverdlovsk, it was good news for
the local Ukrainian officials as the government-controlled territories started
receiving all the produced energy.
Tension
arose between the Luhansk Power Plant workers and Ukrainian soldiers as in
early October two local women were captured by the military servicemen deployed
to fight the pro-Russian separatists, according to Kovalishyn of DTEK. Soldiers
accused the women of connections to the rebels. “They put sacks on their
heads, interrogated and beat them,” Kovalishyn said, adding that the women
were released only after this fact became publicly known.
Kyiv Post staff writer Oksana Gytsenko can be reached at [email protected].
