Repairs to power grid in Ukraine's Kherson to take 'weeks'

By BBC Monitoring

The resumption of power supply to the recently liberated city of Kherson may take up to three weeks, the regional power distributor Khersonoblenerho reported on 18 November.

In a Facebook post, the company said: "Power supply in liberated Kherson may be restored within 14-21 days."

Citing the operations director of the parent company VS Energy, Volodymyr Hetmanov, the company said that Russia had damaged infrastructure worth some 1.5-2bn hryvnyas (some 40.7-54.3m dollars) in Kherson.

"Before the war, Kherson was fed by three main power lines. All of them have been destroyed. The cost of the destroyed infrastructure is 1.5-2bn hryvnyas, according to preliminary estimates by VS Energy. The estimates will be revised," Hetmanov said.

According to the official, Khersonoblenerho is focusing efforts on restoring power supply coming from Mykolayiv.

"We will be able to restore this line the fastest," Hetmanov said, noting that the company will have to restore more than 70 spans of the power transmission line, as well as two towers.

Power engineers from Kirovohrad, Chernivtsi, Zhytomyr and Rivne regional power distribution companies (part of VS Energy) are working to resume power supply to Kherson, according to the report.

Earlier the director of the DTEK energy company, Dmytro Sakharuk, also forecast that power supply to Kherson will be resumed in 2-3 weeks, and even earlier to areas closer to Dnipropetrovsk and Mykolayiv regions.

Source: Interfax-Ukraine news agency, Kyiv, in Russian 0728 gmt 18 Nov 22