Special Focus

December 2, 2024

Oleh Koshlyak: “Bullets whistled above us, and drones buzzed overhead—we kept working gas back”

Oleh Koshlyak, a level-6 electric gas welder from Dnipro's industrial district, is no stranger to difficult jobs. Yet the task of restoring a gas distribution station near Velyka Oleksandrivka in Kherson Oblast proved to be unlike anything he’d faced before. “In autumn 2022, I volunteered with a few of my colleagues,” Oleh recalls. “They told us a shell had hit the station. We set off in a...

November 22, 2024

Maksym Savenko: “We are not just working – we are doing crucial work for people and Ukraine”

Employees of Overhead Line Repair Unit No.1 of the Construction and Repair Center (CRC) of the Southern Region, headed by Maksym Savenko, serve Zaporizhzhia and part of Dnipropetrovsk Oblasts, often going to neighboring regions to help. Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, they have been working in close proximity to the front line. 

Maksym’s power engineers were recently conducting...

November 5, 2024

Dmytro Mysochka: “The hardest thing is to send people to places under constant fire”

Kharkiv is constantly under heavy enemy bombardment. Every day, power engineers travel hundreds of kilometers along broken roads, past destroyed houses, and amidst explosions to repair damage and ensure electricity for residents of Kharkiv and neighboring oblasts.   

Dmytro Mysochka, Head of the Linear Equipment Department of the Eastern Region's CRC, explains, “Our teams take turns going to...

August 30, 2024

Oleksandr Pavliuk: “My job is to deliver materials to strengthen facilities and to evacuate equipment”

People like Oleksandr Pavliuk rarely make the headlines or feature in news stories, yet they perform crucial tasks to keep Ukraine’s gas flowing. Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, Oleksandr, a truck driver at the Zaporizhzhia industrial site of the Ukrainian Gas Transmission System Operator (GTSOU), has been responsible for evacuating work equipment from his site and another site in...

August 13, 2024

Serhiy Nosach: “I have worked and will always work for my people and for victory”

Serhiy Nosach, an electrician at the Eastern Line Production Department of Ukraine's Gas Transmission System Operator (GTSO), embodies courage and professionalism. During intense fighting in Kharkiv Oblast in 2022-2023, Serhiy was responsible for maintaining the gas supply to the city of Derhachi and surrounding villages. Despite the fierce fighting raging around the station, Serhiy twice managed...

July 24, 2024

Dmytro Sotnichenko: “Who, if not us?”

Dmytro Sotnichenko, a senior machinist overseeing the power units at the boiler-turbine shop at "Kyiv thermal power station" Joint Venture, always had a clear vision of his future in the energy sector. His journey began as a student when during a tour of the CHP plant, he instantly felt that he had found his professional calling. 

As a senior machinist, Dmytro remains steadfast at his post,...

July 16, 2024

Ihor Dudarenko: “We were focused solely on shutting down the equipment and preventing further destruction”

Amid the relentless hum of turbines and the flashing control panels at Kyiv’s Combined Heat and Power Plant, shift supervisor Ihor Dudarenko stands as a beacon of resilience. His job at Kyivteploenergo is to ensure the station's energy systems run smoothly—a role that became even more critical in the first chaotic months of the full-scale Russian invasion. 

In those early days, Dudarenko and...

July 9, 2024

Kateryna Kutsenko: “I could not leave my team and my city”

On 12 April 2022, Russian forces struck the Dnipro-Mykolaiv water supply network, thus leaving the city of Mykolaiv without water for the first time. The invaders deliberately destroyed the pipes providing water to the city as they advanced. Since then, the people of Mykolaiv have had no fresh tap water. The local utility company Mykolaivoblteploenergo is doing its best to resolve the problem, at...

June 28, 2024

Advancing Ukraine’s Energy Independence

With USAID’s support, the country is reducing its dependence on Russian energy 

Around 1 a.m. on Feb. 24, 2022, the Ukrainian and Moldovan electric systems disconnected from the Russia-Belarus system. This was a scheduled test in preparation for Ukraine’s and Moldova’s planned synchronization with the European power system the following year, a crucial step toward European Union (EU)...