A crane stacked containers. All around were tangled and severed cables. This is not a port terminal, but an electrical substation in the Odesa region. These critical points in electricity distribution are prime targets for Shahed drones – long-range Russian drones that bombard the entire Ukrainian territory by the hundreds every night. «This substation has already been attacked three times,» said Dmytro Hryhoriev, CEO of DTEK for the Odesa region. «This transformer you see here, we’ve nicknamed it ‘Phoenix.’ It deserves a medal as a Hero of Ukraine because it has survived three Shahed drones,» the Donetsk native said as a joke. The other transformer at the substation, however, was destroyed and «sold to a scrap dealer to help fund the purchase of a replacement.»
DTEK, a private energy company owned by Ukrainian billionaire Rinat Akhmetov, is the country’s leading electricity producer outside the nuclear sector. «In the Odesa region alone, we serve one million residential customers and 40,000 businesses – schools, hospitals, ports. We have to protect 300 substations, and 40,000 kilometers of power lines are under our responsibility,» Hryhoriev said.
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