It’s difficult to establish exactly the moment during Z’s presidential term when function lost is lustre, when churning out hopeful-sounding presentations became secondary to the feasibility of their realization, when the cult of populist idiocy took hold.
Dialectical discourse died in the land of Z, where the thesis and its antithesis are now irrelevant. The Hegelian approach no longer applies. Evolving real ideas is passé. The reality of reconstruction can no longer be discussed rationally in public.
Take, for example, Z’s speech at the Ukraine Recovery Conference in Berlin, where he said that Ukraine would build a gas-fired maneuverable electricity generation network that produces 1 gigawatt by the end of the year. And increase capacity to 4 gigawatts in future years.
In the short term, we also must implement a rapid and cost-effective restoration of all the power facilities that can be restored now. By winter, it is important to do this by winter – within the next three to four months. We know how to do it. We are asking you to provide us with the equipment from your shutdown power plants and direct financial assistance. This will allow us to respond to the situation here and now – to preserve normal life. And another element is highly efficient, decentralized, mobile gas generation. It will solve the problem of energy shortage today, while tomorrow it will switch to hydrogen and balance the new green energy. It is in this area that European and especially German companies are technological leaders. It is in this area that we have a clear plan – how to build up to 1 GW of capacity this year. I reiterate that we need not only to talk about prospects, but we need to solve problems today. There is a war going on today. And another 4 GW in the next few years. It is in this area that we are signing the first contracts at our Conference.
Is he living in a dream world on the gas-fired part, the maneuverable generation part, or about everything?
Gas generated electricity systems are not built in six months, according to Lana Zerkal, former Energy Minister advisor, who says it takes at least one year to find turbines, determine the installation site, design a project, connect them, and train teams to manage them. She adds that there are not enough equipment manufacturers in the world to meet Z’s 4 gigawatts goal.
Yet what Z said sounded hopeful. So does the bogus Investment Guide Brief composed by Ukraine’s Economy Ministry and Kyiv School of Economics. Unfortunately, it’s all bullshit1.
Lots of air alerts this morning. Iranian UAVs, plane-launched cruise missiles and now ballistic missiles.
Video of the day. A woman walks, waving her Ukrainian passport, from Russia-occupied Oleshky across the destroyed Antonovsky Bridge towards Kherson.
Ukraine has lost of about 10 GW of capacity in various electricity generation areas, including 6 GW due to Russia’s takeover of the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant and missile attacks on other infrastructure in 2022-23. Russia resumed massive attacks on the country’s energy infrastructure this year. As a result, several thermal power plants and hydroelectric power plants with a total capacity of more than 5 GW, as well as other equipment, were blown to smithereens. It’s the reason no one takes the elevator any more. The development of a diversified network of small, most likely gas-fired power plants will require a lot of time and money, years and many billions of dollars. And we haven’t really started yet.
The longest journey starts with a single step. Z would do better to start with small steps - ask EU for thousands of gas or diesel generators, what's the point of building big multi MW or GW power stations that are just targets? Disperse tens of thousands of generators across Ukraine instead.