Russia's attacks on Ukraine's power grid have destroyed half of its electricity generation capacity since winter, leading to planned blackouts and rolling blackouts, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Tuesday.

“Nine gigawatts of power have already been destroyed as a result of Russian missile and drone strikes. Electricity consumption peaked last winter at 18 gigawatts. So half of it doesn’t exist now,” Zelensky said at a conference on the restoration of Ukraine in Ukraine. Berlin.

He also called on Kyiv's Western allies to supply more air defense systems, saying that "it is missile and bomb terror that helps Russian troops advance on the ground."

“Air defense is the answer,” Zelensky said.

Ukrainian state energy company Ukrenergo said it was extending planned outages across the country due to increased consumption.

“Today… the validity period of hourly shutdown schedules throughout Ukraine has been extended – restrictions will be introduced from 14:00 to 23:00,” Ukrenergo said in a statement.

On Monday, the company announced outages from 4:00 pm to 10:00 pm, adding that there will be outages on Tuesday from 2:00 pm to 7:00 pm.

“The reason is that consumption continues to increase. At the same time, due to extensive damage, Ukrainian power plants cannot produce as much electricity as they did before the terrorist attacks,” Ukrenergo said.

Zelensky said the strikes showed that Russian President Vladimir Putin was trying to “hone the practice of destroying energy facilities,” including connections between the Ukrainian and European energy systems.

Ukrenergo Chairman Vladimir Kudrytsky said last week that Ukraine could take “years” to restore its full generating capacity.

“We are dealing with an absolutely unprecedented scale of destruction,” he said, adding that thermal power plant capacity is at “historic” lows and “virtually there is not a single hydroelectric plant that has not been damaged.”

“It is technically impossible to quickly restore these damaged power plants. This will take time: weeks, often months, sometimes years,” he said in an interview published on the Ukrenergo Telegram channel.