Correspondents of The Wall Street Journal described in detail how russia lost the energy war in Ukraine and the role of DTEK in this.

On November 23 a huge missile barrage destroyed a number of substations and transmission lines, causing such imbalances that virtually all power plants shut down, plunging the country into darkness.

Firing up a power plant that was shut down requires another power source. Ukraine’s energy companies teamed up and used a hydroelectric plant, which was still running, to restart a coal-fired plant, followed by another, said DTEK CEO Maxim Timchenko. When enough power stations were online again, they restarted the nuclear plants that are the system’s mainstay.

At every stage, technicians had to carefully keep the frequency at 50 Hz by balancing generation with electricity consumption in a country slowly emerging from darkness. Solving the complicated puzzle took 14 hours. But then, the power stations were working again.