Volodymyr Kudrytskyi, CEO of the Ukrainian grid operator Ukrenergo, has counted more than a thousand attacks on his country's electricity supply.

Millions of citizens are without electricity, they freeze and sit in the dark at night.

Every day, Kudrytskyi says, his people are at work patching up lines, erecting electricity pylons and upgrading substations.

Now more spare parts, floating power plants and mobile generators should help.

The Federal Agency for Technical Relief is delivering 470 diesel generators paid for by the Foreign Ministry, each of which fits on a car trailer, to Odessa, Mykolaiv and the Kherson region, and another 70 to the Republic of Moldova.

Andreas Mihm

Business correspondent for Austria, Central and Eastern Europe and Turkey based in Vienna.

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Russian attacks repeatedly bring down network operations there.

President Vladimir Putin has just announced in Moscow that he will continue shelling Ukraine's infrastructure.

Changing from region to region, electricity currently has to be switched off by the hour.

Although demand has fallen by 30 percent since the outbreak of war, the loss on the generation side due to damaged power plants is even greater, Kudrytskyi explained during an online conference.

Additional electricity imports are hardly possible.

Europe's transmission system operators have limited trading capacity with Ukraine and the Republic of Moldova to 300 megawatts per day and 250 megawatts at night.

There is great fear that the network, which is already being used, could be affected by blackouts in the Ukraine.

Nevertheless, Kudrytskyi hopes that imports can be doubled to up to 600 megawatts.

That would be expensive for Ukraine, however, because electricity prices are much higher in the west.

Help from Turkey

Help is said to come from Turkey in the form of floating gas and oil power plants.

Karpowership , one of the world's largest operators of floating power plants, is planning to deliver up to 400 megawatts to Ukraine via Moldova and Romania and is now looking for a safe anchorage with a high-voltage connection.

Day-to-day operations director Zeynep Harezi told Turkey's Anadolu Agency that talks are being held with Ukraine, the United Nations and other institutions.

One million households could be supplied with 200 to 400 megawatts of electricity.

Karpowership belongs to the Turkish conglomerate Karadeniz Holding and has a fleet of 36 floating gas and oil power plants with a capacity of 30 to 500 megawatts each.

The company operates in Africa, Asia and Latin America and recently secured the electricity supply to Cuba.

Karpower brings the fuel for the floating power plants, all that is required is a connection to the power grid.

At the end of November there was talk of three power plant ships for Odessa.

But apparently the security situation is too critical for that, which is why the talk is now of the neighboring regions of Moldova and Romania.

There are also shutdowns in the Republic of Moldova, whose electricity system depends on that of Ukraine.

Help could come quickly.

“The ships are ready and operational.

We can deploy them in just three weeks," Harezi told Japanese business newspaper Nikkei.

In the meantime, Ukrenergo boss Kudrytskyi is desperately looking for spare parts for his power grid: "We are talking to suppliers on every continent." No warehouse in the world is big enough to cover the demand.

Urgent repairs to Ukraine's power grid have immediate priority, says EBRD President Odile Renaud-Basso.

Western relief efforts have started - even if once again poorly coordinated.

The American government provided the country with 53 million dollars for the purchase of critical network equipment.

Earlier, the EBRD had pledged a EUR 300 million loan to Ukrenergo to purchase equipment for emergency repairs to Ukraine's electricity transmission system and a EUR 72 million grant from the Netherlands.

The Europeans are going their own way: the Energy Community, which aims to help the EU's neighboring countries to coordinate their energy policies with those of the Union, has set up a platform for monetary and material donations with the EU Commission and the Ukrainian government.

Your appeal for help is aimed at governments, associations and companies in the manufacturing and automotive industries.

The aid plan looks simply like this: The government in Kiev names companies that need help.

Secret camps

The homepage of the Vienna-based energy community lists everything that is needed: transformers, heaters and fuel, cars and trucks for repair brigades, tools, generators, insulators, cables, wires, cable connectors, clamps, couplings and much more.

Some of it has now arrived in a secret warehouse in the Ukrainian border area.

Other things still take time, such as transporting an oversized transformer from the Baltic States.

32 million euros have already been received in monetary donations, says Deputy Director Dirk Buschle.

Millions more are expected.

In view of the beginning of winter, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians in particular, who often endure without electricity and heating in sub-zero temperatures, are hoping for this.