Ukraine resumes electricity exports to Europe - minister

Ukraine has resumed electricity exports to Europe, its energy minister said late on Monday, after they were suspended in October when Russia began launching regular missile and drone attacks at critical energy infrastructure. 

The strikes caused sweeping power outages for civilians and industries, forcing workers to work overtime to try to repair the grid. 

"We have resumed exports," Energy Minister German Galushchenko said, adding that Russia "did not succeed at all at destroying our energy system". 

The European Union is Ukraine's main export market for energy. Galushchenko said the supply of electricity to the domestic population remained the country's priority despite the resumption of exports. 

"We hope to reach the export volumes that we had last year. We plan and will conduct negotiations to increase them because today's reserves in the system allow us to do that," he said in televised comments. 

In June 2022, Ukraine, which used to export power to Moldova, Hungary, Slovakia and Poland, said it was hoping to bring in 1.5 billion euros ($1.64 billion) from electricity exports to the EU by the end of the year. 

"There are currently plans to increase cross-border traffic between Ukraine and Poland, which will increase exports," Galushchenko said. 

The International Criminal Court's top prosecutor visited Ukraine in February to investigate Russia's air strikes on the power grid. 

Kyiv says the attacks aimed to intimidate ordinary civilians. Moscow said they were aimed at weakening the enemy's military. 

Reuters