“According to the expert, the cost of light in the EU is often higher than in Ukraine, and businesses will include additional costs in the price of goods.”, — write: www.unian.ua
According to the expert, the cost of light in the EU is often higher than in Ukraine, and businesses will include additional costs in the price of goods.
The expert noted that the cost of electricity in the EU is often higher than in Ukraine / photo UNIAN, Mykola TysEnergy Minister Denys Shmyhal tasked Ukrenergo with reducing the duration of outages where the situation is currently the most difficult, by increasing electricity imports, building additional transmission lines, and improving the transmission system.
Stanislav Ignatiev, an energy expert of the Ukrainian Institute for the Future, said in a comment to UNIAN that we shouldn’t expect significant volumes of European kilowatts in the near future. He reminded that in autumn 2025, Ukraine had the right to import 2150 MW.
“This is roughly how the Khmelnytskyi nuclear power plant generates – that’s how much they can give us,” the expert explained.
According to him, after a long negotiation process, the European Union allowed Kyiv to purchase an additional 200 MW of electricity.
“These are small volumes, and the development of interconnectors (power transmission lines, UNIAN) will not give us large volumes of electricity supply to the network today. These are long enough projects,” Ignatiev said.
He explains that in order to significantly increase the import of electricity, in addition to a new transmission line, it is necessary to build a new substation, and this will take quite a long time. In addition, in order to increase the import of light, it is necessary to conduct negotiations with European operators.
“Any 110-kilovolt substation is built for at least a year. If it is 330 or 750 kilovolts, then it will not be one year, but more than a year. These are medium-term projects. Of course, we need them, but also in this heating period, and probably in the next one, we will not see a miracle that the volume of electricity supply will significantly increase in our country,” – he emphasizes Ignatiev
In the context of increasing electricity imports, he also proposes to allow private companies to build small power transmission lines at the level of 110 kW – “where Europeans are ready to supply electricity.”
“With these volumes, we can balance the border regions: Chernivtsi, Zakarpattia, Lviv, maybe a little Volyn,” the expert emphasized.
At the same time, he draws attention to the fact that the cost of European electricity is often higher than Ukrainian electricity, which can affect the cost of products.
“Yesterday evening, the cost of electricity was 12 hryvnias and 14 kopecks per kilowatt-hour without transportation and transmission… Consumers will not always be ready to buy bread three times more expensive than it costs,” Ignatiev concluded.
The attacks of the Russian Federation on the energy system of Ukraine – the latest newsStarting in 2026, Russia continued its systematic attacks on Ukraine’s energy system. In particular, five oblasts of Ukraine were partially left without power due to energy strikes on the night of January 19.
Due to systematic hostilities, Ukraine is forced to increase electricity imports from the EU. At the beginning of 2026, the chairman of the board of “Ukerenergo” Vitaly Zaichenko announced that from January 1, 2026, Ukraine will be able to import 2,450 MW of electricity from the EU.
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