More and faster private sector investments in renewable and battery storage projects in Ukraine are needed for the country to avert blackouts this winter, the International Energy Agency said. A seven-year-old girl was among the fatalities from the latest bombardment of Ukraine’s power grid by Russia on Thursday, a campaign that has escalated as winter begins. More physical defenses, a bigger stockpile of spare parts, greater grid transmission capacity from Europe, and backup supplies of natural gas are all urgently needed, the IEA said in an analysis of Ukraine’s readiness this week.
In the meantime, Western pressure on Russia’s energy sector is having mixed results. Sanctions imposed by the Trump administration on Rosneft and Lukoil have already forced the latter company to sell its foreign assets, but so far Russia’s oil exports remain steady. The sanctions “could meaningfully pressure Putin to seek an end to the war,” Edward Fishman, a senior State Department sanctions official in the Biden administration, told Semafor. But “it all comes down to enforcement, especially credibly threatening secondary sanctions against the likes of Chinese banks, UAE oil traders, and Indian refineries.”