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Russian Missiles Strike Solar Power Plant in Ukraine

4 points| elsewhen | 3 years ago |vice.com | reply

2 comments

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[+] jefurii|3 years ago|reply
I'm not a power engineer, but it seems like an advantage of solar is that you can just rewire around the damaged panels and it keeps working at slightly reduced capacity.
[+] pomdapi|3 years ago|reply
If I'm not mistaken about the solar plant we're talking about, not quite :

That Canadian-financed solar plant has basically been held hostage for the last 3 years by president Zelensky's political financier Mr. Kolomoyski.

After having his cronies (pre-Zelenski) vote a law facilitating renewables investment by foreigners (expedited 6 months permits, etc), and selling a Canadian company the land on which it sits, and having said Canadian consortium pour 2.7B$ in the project, he prevented them from operating.

They couldn't transfer any electric power so produced. He blocked them using by his stranglehold on that part of the Ukrainian power grid, and even going as far as having paid his "private security rent-a-swat-cops" from Kharkhov and Dnipro cutting the alternative lines from helicopters (said private security later forming into a military unit calling themselves "azov something..." (ahem, yeah, some of the very same).

He's basically been racketeering them under the protection of the political parties he finances. Canadian've had enough so there's now a several billion dollar court case going on between the Canadian operators of the plant, the local Ukrainian grid operator (part owned by him) and Kolomoyski's own neighbouring power company.

Caveat : some details may be wrong, as this is from memory, somebody would need to check from accuracy.