Russia-Ukraine war live: Ukraine’s power grid destroyed on a colossal scale after Russian strikes, says energy chief

The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, has warned his country must be prepared for the situation in Ukraine to escalate.

Speaking at a conference in Berlin hosted by the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper, Scholz said:

In view of the development of the war and Russia’s visible and growing failures … we must be ready for an escalation.

This could include the destruction of infrastructure, he added.

Scholz visited China earlier this month to meet its president, Xi Jinping, a trip he said was worth it alone for spelling out the two countries’ joint stance against using nuclear weapons.

In the first visit by a G7 leader to China since the Covid pandemic, Scholz pressed Xi to prevail on Russia to end its invasion of Ukraine.

In a readout of the meeting by Chinese state media, Xi agreed that both leaders “jointly oppose the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons” over Ukraine, though he refrained from criticising Russia or calling on Moscow to withdraw its troops.

The head of Ukraine’s national power grid operator, Ukrenergo, has described the damage dealt to Ukrainian power-generating facilities by Russian missile attacks as “colossal”.

Volodymyr Kudrytskyi, the chief executive officer of Ukrenergo, told a briefing that practically no thermal or hydroelectric stations had been left unscathed by the Russian attacks.

Kudrytskyi said:

The scale of destruction is colossal. In Ukraine there is a power generation deficit. We cannot generate as much energy as consumers can use.

He said Ukrainians could face long power outages but that his company wanted to help provide the conditions for people to stay in the country through winter.

Ukraine had enough fuel reserves after building them up before Russia’s invasion, he said, and was working hard to repair damaged infrastructure but was hoping to secure some spare parts abroad.

He dismissed the need to evacuate civilians, after Ukraine’s deputy prime minister Iryna Vereshchuk announced on Monday the evacuation of residents from recently liberated areas of the Kherson and Mykolaiv regions.

People from the two southern regions, which were shelled regularly by Russian forces in the past months, have been advised to move to safer areas in the central and western parts of the country, amid fears that the damage to infrastructure caused by the war is too severe for people to endure the winter.

Asked about the proposals to evacuate some cities worst hit by energy shortages, Kudrytskyi said such calls were “inappropriate”.

The EU will give a further €2.5bn (£2.2bn) to Ukraine for the reconstruction of the country, according to the head of the bloc’s executive, Ursula von der Leyen.

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