Quick to build and able to power a small city, the Oriv wind farm in western Ukraine is exactly the kind of project Kyiv hopes will backstop its power grid against routine Russian strikes. Waves of Russian drones and missiles have ravaged Ukrainian energy infrastructure since 2022, cutting power to millions of people in what Kyiv and the International Criminal Court classify as a war crime aimed at demoralising its people.JOIN US ON TELEGRAMFollow our coverage of the war on the @Kyivpost_official. Faced with the relentless attacks, Ukraine has set itself ambitious targets to shift away from Soviet-era coal and gas plants towards decentralised, renewable energy sources like wind and solar. Diversifying should be “the cornerstone of Ukraine’s energy resilience,” the energy ministry wrote in a report last year. While other countries are shifting towards renewables because they emit fewer greenhouse gases, in Ukraine, the technologies offer the added advantage of being harder to destroy -- as they are spread across a larger area -- and cheaper to replace. “It is an incredible support for the energy system in difficult times,” Greenpeace coordinator Marine Abramyan told AFP from the Oriv wind farm, in Ukraine’s western Lviv region. Its 10 turbines cover the annual consumption of about 125,000 people -- the size of a small city, according to the Czech investors who helped fund it. It was built in about three years, despite delays caused by the war, opening in September 2024.