Since the start of Russia’s war in Ukraine, Kostiantyn Krynytskyi, Head of Energy at Ecoaction, and his colleagues, have been tracking the ongoing environmental damage caused by Russia’s aggression. In today’s episode of New Security Broadcast, ECSP Director Lauren Risi speaks with Krynytskyi to discuss how Ecoaction, the largest environmental NGO in Ukraine, is mapping out the environmental destruction caused by the war and working to develop a green post-war reconstruction of Ukraine. Krynytskyi shares how the war has impacted Ecoaction’s priorities and shifted its approach to address short-term energy needs in Ukraine while safeguarding a secure and sustainable energy future.

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“We started advocating with our European partners for the Ukrainian electricity system to be connected to the European system. The Ukrainian energy system was preparing itself to be disconnected from the Russian one and connected to the European system in 2023. In 2022, there were supposed to be two pilot periods in winter and in summer where our energy system disconnected from Russia and then it should have connected again. This first disconnection occurred seven hours before the invasion. When the Russian army started marching on Kyiv and other cities, the electricity system was neither connected to the European system nor the Russian one … [and] it was a huge strain on the energy system.”

“We advocate for the greening of emergency aid [to] diversify, give us generators, but also solar panels, heat pumps, and wind power. The war has heightened the conversation around renewables, as you can imagine, for years we have been advocating for a switch to a decentralized generation with renewables on the community level … But climate change is not the first priority, so now the focus is on energy security and the resilience of communities.”

“Ukrainians currently have a strange and horrible collective experience of the targeted attacks on our energy infrastructure, and now people understand the value of [decentralized generation]. The term decentralized generation has become more mainstream, our President, Zelensky uses it, as well as the Minister of Energy … and we highlight that [it should be] based on renewables. Our main message is it doesn’t make sense to plan this transition for after the war, we need to start doing the groundwork so when the war ends, we already have projects, ideas, concepts, and strategies so it can be implemented quickly…Renewables can help now, and renewables will help in the future because a decentralized system is much harder to destroy.”