Energy sector enterprises have resumed purchases of coal from the temporarily occupied areas of Donbas, Minister on temporarily occupied territories and IDPs Vadym Chernysh told reporters Thursday, according to an UNIAN correspondent.
He noted that there was no passenger traffic and all movement on railway in the area would be solely freight traffic.
”We are talking about transportation of coal, which the country needs, especially in such heat when everyone turns on their air conditioning,” the Minister said.
According to Chernysh, freight traffic has been resumed in some areas near the contact line.
He has stressed that it is difficult to say security conditions are met in full, as there are ongoing hostilities, but ”through the efforts of the OSCE special monitoring mission and the arrangements between Ukraine and Russia in Minsk, it is possible to provide a relative security level of certain rail hauls, where the coal is transported.”
As UNIAN reported earlier, Ukraine began to experience an acute shortage of coal in the summer of 2014, when, as a result of hostilities, the government completely lost control of part of Donbas, where the majority of the coal mines were located. Nuclear power plants account for about 60% of power generation in the country, and the remaining share is generated by thermal power plants that use coal and gas, as well as hydropower plants and ”green” energy facilities.
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