According to Serhiy Zhuravliov, head of the company's economic security service, this slows down the work to restore electricity after the aggressor's shelling of the region. Despite the large-scale war in the Kharkiv region, the problem of theft of power system elements, such as wires, transformers, transformer oil, and substation elements, has become acute.
Since the beginning of 2024, 47 cases of theft of power equipment have already been recorded.
As a result, according to the press service of KharkivOblenergo, the company suffered losses of UAH 17.5 million. This is the amount of money needed to restore the grid, namely to lay 73 kilometres of wires on power lines that were simply stolen during the war; to purchase 3.7 tonnes of transformer oil that was stolen by thieves.
According to the press service, thieves are even stealing poles and elements of transformer substations. Thus, there is an example of the theft of part of the equipment of SS-110/6 – the losses amounted to UAH 8.2 million. Currently, police officers are taking measures to identify the perpetrators in 43 cases of property theft. In four cases, police officers have identified the perpetrators of the thefts and are conducting investigations.
