The Biden administration’s rush to help Ukraine push through a cold winter as the war continues is running up against the clock.
Russia has ramped up missile and drone attacks on Ukraine’s energy grid, knocking out heat and sending the country into darkness as the winter approaches.
Struggling on the battlefield, Russian President Vladimir Putin had settled on Ukraine’s energy grid and its civilian infrastructure as “his easiest objective,” the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Energy Resources Assistant Secretary Geoffrey Pyatt said in an interview Monday.
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The blackouts have left Ukrainians in major cities without power, prompting an increasingly urgent push for support from the U.S. and other Western allies. The White House last week requested nearly $38 billion more in Ukraine aid from Congress, which includes funding to help repair the country’s energy network and bolster supply.
Pyatt said he spoke Monday morning with Ukraine’s minister of infrastructure, the deputy energy minister, the head of national grid operator Ukrenergo, and the Ambassador to Washington, Oksana Markarova, about their priority requirements.
“We want to do everything that we can to help Ukraine to heal the damage that’s been done as quickly as possible,” said Pyatt, a former ambassador to Ukraine from 2013 to 2016. “And then also to think about its long-term future.”
Asked whether the U.S. was working to supply the transformers and other equipment that Ukraine says it desperately needs, Pyatt did not answer directly but said the Biden administration would detail more soon.
“There are things which we are procuring and are working on now,” he said, adding that the administration would have announcements in the coming days and weeks, and pointing to a Dec. 13 conference hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron. Pyatt was speaking ahead of remarks at an event hosted by the Central American Bank for Economic Integration in Washington, D.C.
Pyatt urged Congress to move on the administration’s supplemental funding request, which includes $1.1 billion to secure and repair Ukraine’s energy sector, and to address Ukraine’s energy supply. Reports indicate that at least one-third of Ukraine’s electrical transmission hubs have been damaged or destroyed, according to the White House.
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“We are moving as fast as possible to make sure that Putin cannot achieve through attacks on civilian infrastructure what he has failed to achieve on the battlefield, but this is going to be a challenging winter,” the official added.
Russian strikes on civilian and critical infrastructure have disabled nearly half the country’s energy network, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said Friday.
