Russia attacks energy facilities in Ukraine in latest ‘mass attack’

A Russian barrage damaged a Ukrainian power plant and several energy facilities overnight, officials said on Thursday, the latest in a series of attacks that have brought Ukraine’s electricity grid to the brink of collapse.

Targeted missile and drone attacks in recent months have crippled Ukraine’s power generation capacity and forced Kyiv to impose power cuts and import supplies from EU countries.

“The enemy attacked a number of energy infrastructure facilities,” the Energy Ministry said, adding that Russian missiles attacked energy facilities in four regions, including near Kyiv.

AFP journalists in the capital heard air raid sirens blaring over Kyiv in the early hours of Thursday.

DTEK, Ukraine’s largest private energy company, said the airstrikes had caused “serious damage” to one of its power plants, but did not disclose where the plant was located.

“This is the seventh mass attack on the company’s thermal power plant in the last three months,” the company said.

President Volodymyr Zelensky said the attacks had halved the war-torn country’s electricity generation capacity compared to last year and called on allies to send more air defense systems to protect vital infrastructure.

– “Crisis this winter” –

DTEK CEO Maxim Timchenko echoed these calls, saying the power plant hit early Thursday had already been damaged in an earlier attack.

“We must urgently close our airspace, otherwise Ukraine faces a serious crisis this winter. I ask the allies to help us defend our energy system and rebuild it in time,” he said.

There was no immediate comment from the Kremlin on the latest barrage, but Moscow insists that its forces do not attack civilian infrastructure.

However, the Russian Defense Ministry acknowledged that there had been retaliatory attacks on energy sites in response to a wave of Ukrainian cross-border attacks on Russian oil facilities, especially storage facilities.

In the wake of the latest Ukrainian attack on Russian territory, the governor of Russia’s Krasnodar region near the annexed Crimean peninsula announced that a woman had been killed in a drone attack on oil facilities.

The affected areas included the city of Slavyansk-on-Kuban in Krasnodar Region, where the woman was killed, Governor Veniamin Kondratiev said.

The Russian Defense Ministry said it had shot down 15 Ukrainian drones that also attacked oil fields in the southern republic of Adygea and the Tambov region.

There was no immediate comment from Ukraine, but sources in the Ukrainian security services have claimed responsibility for previous, similar attacks whose stated aim was to damage Russia’s oil revenues and empty its war chest.

– ‘Critical Infrastructure’ –

The Ukrainian Air Force said Russia had fired nine missiles and 27 Iranian-made attack drones and that air defense systems had shot down all but four missiles.

It was also confirmed that the attacks were on “critical infrastructure” facilities, including in the Dnipropetrovsk region, one of the regions in which DTEK operates.

It was said that air defense systems had also been activated in the regions of Zaporizhia, Donetsk, Kherson, Kharkiv and Kyiv, among others.

The Energy Ministry said that a total of seven energy plant employees were injured and that more than 200,000 people in the Vinnytsia region were temporarily cut off from electricity.

“There will be no outages at critical infrastructure companies,” it continued.

Russia, meanwhile, has stepped up its deadly artillery attacks on contested frontline areas of Ukraine in the south and east of the country.

The governor of the southern Kherson region announced on Thursday morning that one person had been killed and three injured in the last 24 hours.

In Kharkiv, a northeastern region where Russia recently launched a surprise ground offensive, the governor said a woman was killed by Russian fire.

And in the eastern Donetsk region, two people were killed, one of them in the frontline city of Toretsk, where Russian forces have gained ground after a long lull in fighting, the governor said.

The Ukrainian military said on Thursday that Russian forces were trying to expel troops from the nearby villages of Shumy and New York.

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