[News] Ukraine war: On the front line with engineers working to fix stricken power grid

[BirSaNN]

With a dusting of fresh winter snow settling around us and the crackle of electricity loud in the wires over our heads, Michael runs his gloved fingers over golf ball-sized holes in the crippled hulk of a huge transformer.

"Here, and here, and here," he says, as he shows where shrapnel from a Russian missile punctured the transformer's thick sides.

Sharp metal fragments of the missile lie on the ground nearby.

Along the way, other transformers as big as bungalows are disappearing behind protective cocoons of concrete and sandbags.

Above us loom the high, forbidding, Soviet-era walls of the power plant's vast turbine hall. Panes of glass for half a mile shattered by explosions from the 12 missiles that have landed here since mid-October.

For all the well-publicised damage, the authorities don't want us to reveal too much.

Since October, when temperatures began to plummet, Russia has been using strikes on Ukraine's power grid to force the civilian po[CENSORED]tion into submission. For two weeks, the BBC watched engineers and technicians who run the network racing to repair the damage and keep electricity flowing across the country.

We have been asked not to reveal the precise location of some of the facilities we visit. We've also altered the names of some of the officials we meet.

"Every time the equipment is damaged, it gets us all right here in our soul," Michael says, tapping his chest.

Some of these huge rust-stained machines are older than the men who run them. But for Michael, the plant's manager, they're his babies.

"It's our life. Our second family."

Michael sent his first family - his wife and teenage son - to Europe early in the war. Their dog, a playful golden retriever, now accompanies him to work every day.

The transformer - 130 tonnes of twisted metal, dangling wires and scorch marks where cooling oil leaked and caught fire - is not easy to replace.

"I know how much effort it takes to build this, to install and launch it," says Michael, a veteran of 30 years in this industry. "It's not something you can buy in a store."

The same goes for the turbines inside - monstrous, deafening mechanical dinosaurs, churning and hissing away at the heart of the plant. They're hugely impressive machines, but there's little time to admire them, as the air raid siren sounds for the third time this morning.

In a well-practised drill, most of the plant's staff head for the bunkers. The atmosphere is relaxed - such interruptions are commonplace - until word starts to spread of a fresh wave of Russian attacks on the power grid. A sister plant in the west has been hit. A picture circulates of fire raging in a turbine hall much like the one we were in just now.

Then, even through the thick concrete walls of our underground retreat, we hear a distant explosion. There's tension in the room as the men and women check their phones. A crowded apartment block, not far away, has been hit.

The scene, when we arrive soon after dark, is chaotic and desperate. A missile has torn a gaping hole in the middle of the nine-storey building. Thick smoke, pierced by flashlights, rises from a pile of rubble. Dozens of rescue workers and volunteers are working frantically to find survivors.

The death toll, which mounts inexorably over the coming days, is one of the highest of the war so far. Mothers, fathers, children. Whole families.

At the power station, the following morning, the mood is bleak. Everyone believes the missile was aimed at them.

"We need to stop the attacks," Michael says. "We need to close the sky over Ukraine."

Until that happens, Ukraine's entire grid will be in jeopardy. Especially substations, which have borne the brunt of Moscow's wrath. These vital hubs, where transformers turn high voltage electricity from power plants into lower mains voltage that businesses and homes can use, have been targeted over and over again.

link: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-64467774