Post by European-Ukrainian Energy Agency

Energy infrastructure in Ukraine is under attack. The Air Force has to prioritise cities and strategic nodes, which leaves a real gap around private energy assets. Something has shifted, though. Since late 2025, enterprises can legally establish their own air defence groups, integrated under Air Force command. By April this year, 24 companies had received authorised status. And in Kharkiv oblast, a private unit downed an advanced Shahed, the first confirmed interception of its kind. The model works. Standing up this capability costs money and takes 3 to 6 months. Passive protection, hardening, redundancy, rapid repair capacity, and increasingly active defence, whether through a private AD group or outsourced services, all of this has to be built into the financial model from the start. And none of it will be covered by donors through grants or concessional financing. It falls entirely on the investor. There is one factor that makes this more than just a cost question. Passive and active protection measures, if properly implemented, should improve access to war risk insurance, which today remains extremely expensive. That link between investment in protection and insurance affordability is not yet well understood or priced into project structures. For any company considering energy assets in Ukraine, this is no longer optional. Protection costs have to be factored in from the outset. And that additional financial pressure makes the question of bankable demand even more critical. Anastasiia Vereshchynska, Executive Director of EUEA, puts it directly. When we talk about new generation, we are critically missing the other piece of the puzzle. Demand. A bankable offtake counterparty is the foundation of any business model and the primary condition for international financing. Without it, even a well-protected project cannot get funded. That is why EUEA and the Ukrainian Wind Energy Association have spent the past year advocating for new derisking and financial instruments for the sector, including the RAMP UP offtake guarantee mechanism, developed together with the EBRD and the World Bank over the past two years. This session, convened by Rasmussen Global together with EUEA and Scatec, gives its conclusions a direct channel into policy and donor decisions at URC 2026.