The former energy minister has not ruled out power outages in Ukraine over the New Year holidays

Power outages are possible in Ukraine over the New Year holidays, and even an additional gigawatt from the government will not solve the problem.

This was stated by former Minister of Energy and Coal Industry Yurii Prodan in an interview with the outlet Telegraf.

According to him, the stability of the power system has to be monitored daily—and sometimes even hourly.

“Even if they say there will be electricity during the holidays, you shouldn’t count on 24/7—one massive strike can destroy everything,” Prodan noted.

He explained that the additional gigawatt that has been found is quickly offset by colder weather.

“At minus 10°C, demand increases by at least the output of one nuclear power unit. Even without shelling, the system has a deficit and almost no reserves to compensate for falling temperatures,” he said.

As a reminder, earlier Prime Minister Yuliia Svyrydenko said that starting December 24, power outages for the public in Ukraine should become less frequent, because all responsible agencies were tasked with allocating up to 1 GW of freed-up energy resources to household consumers.

Meanwhile, the day before, Russia carried out another air attack on Ukraine, using more than 600 drones and nearly 40 missiles. Many regions were hit, where emergency power cuts were introduced. According to Ukrainian authorities, the main targets were energy facilities.