Winter aid for Ukraine: generators, buses and pontoon bridges

The European Union and Norway are sending Ukraine a winter aid package: 500 generators, buses and pontoon bridges. The announcement was made in Dublin on Thursday, where Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was received by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President António Costa.

The generators will serve as temporary sources of electricity, while the buses will be used both for evacuations and in regular public transport.

Bridges for Kyiv

The pontoon bridges from Norway are especially important for Kyiv: damaged bridges complicate supplies and everyday traffic. According to the Unian agency, eight temporary crossings over the Dnipro are due to appear in the capital.

“The first two could be in operation as early as next year,” said Mykola Kalashnyk, Ukraine’s minister for restoration, infrastructure and transport. According to him, this will raise capacity by roughly 15 percent.

Russia has launched a large-scale campaign of strikes on Kyiv’s bridges, trying to paralyze logistics and cause a transport collapse between the left and right banks of the Dnipro. It is using upgraded “suicide” drones and ballistic missiles for this.

Who else is helping with bridges

Bridge engineer Anna Minyukova said that Japan’s JICA agency has handed Ukraine 720 meters of prefabricated bridge structures for repairs. In total, Ukraine plans to build 21 temporary crossings over three rivers. Besides the bridges in the new package, Norway has already supplied ten sets of temporary bridges.

The Czech Republic has also given Ukraine several temporary and pontoon bridges. It sent the first two in June 2022 from state reserves: these are heavy bridge sets that Czechia uses, for example, in flood recovery.

Around Prague, based on reporting by novinky.cz