Ukraine is in urgent need of transformers - new or used - to repair its power grid damaged by Russian attacks. The country is also hoping for help from companies and communities in Germany, said former member of parliament Viktoria Wojzizka of the German Press Agency.

Wojzizka works in Warsaw for a center that supports the government in Kyiv in organizing foreign aid. Infrastructure Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov has set up a team there to find spare parts for the energy infrastructure.

The many emergency generators that are now being sent to Ukraine are a help after more than nine months of war, said Wojzizka. However, they did not solve the problem of the power grid. Ukraine can generate enough electricity on its own.

But Russia is destroying substations with transformers with rocket attacks, so that electricity can no longer be distributed. The district heating network, which supplies millions of homes with heating and hot water, would not work without electricity. In deep frost, the district heating lines threatened to freeze and then fail until spring.

Wojzizka suggested that German manufacturers of transformers should therefore prioritize orders for the Ukraine. She also appealed to buyers of transformers to cede their new systems or the old systems they are replacing to Ukraine. There are also presumably used transformers for the Ukraine in decommissioned coal-fired power plants and network operators - as well as in eastern German municipalities after the modernization of their power supply.