In Zaporizhia (Ukraine), villagers claim that Russian military troops entered the Tokmak solar power plant and began removing and stealing the solar panels.
Ukrainian news portal Vlasti.net first received a report of this incident. There are around 100 football fields worth of solar panels at the Tokmak Solar Energy Station in Ukraine, making it the largest in the country.
The Zaporizhzhya nuclear power station, Europe’s largest, was also taken by Russian soldiers following a risky and internationally condemned shelling of the site.
According to the most recent data from the Nuclear Energy Agency, there are just two reactors left at the nuclear power plant.
After a failed attempt to seize the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in March, Russian soldiers returned control to Ukrainian authorities, according to the IAEA at the time.
In the first few days of the fighting, the invading forces targeted a gas pipeline in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city. There have been reports of damage to other installations as well.
In contrast, Ukraine’s energy minister made a combative statement earlier this month, threatening to humiliate Vladimir Putin by reconstructing Ukraine’s energy infrastructure to a higher standard than previously.
German Galushchenko lamented the “many losses, unfortunately, in the employees of our energy sector” as he spoke via video link at the IEA meeting in Denmark.
Furthermore, he said, “The war Russia is waging against our country will cause serious damage to our infrastructure.”
“In some areas, it has been destroyed. So we’ll have to start from scratch.”
One of these endeavors would entail “massive financial efforts and become an opportunity to overhaul the Ukrainian energy sector,” so to speak.
With the theft of Ukrainian solar panels, Russia has also tried to impair Ukraine’s power supply as a military strategy.
A cyber attack on Ukraine’s high-voltage electrical substations was reported in April by Ukrainian authorities as being the work of the Russian Sandworm hacking organization.
Idustroyer2, a new malware, may directly attack electrical utility infrastructure by sending commands to substation devices that control the flow of power.
According to Farid Safarov, Ukraine’s deputy minister of electricity, 2 million people were supplied by the substations.
Ukraine’s cybersecurity agency, known as the State Services for Special Communication and Information Protection (SSSCIP), declared that the hack attempt “did not impair the provision of electricity at the power company,” Viktor Zhora said.
This issue was quickly addressed,” the company said in a statement. The planned devastation, however, was enormous.”
According to reports from the US, UK, and EU, a massive cyberattack by Russian hackers on a satellite internet network resulted in thousands of Ukrainian modems falling offline last month.
