hydroelectric plant hit by eight Russian missiles, one of largest attacks on Ukraine’s power grid

The largest hydroelectric power station in Ukraine, located on the Dnieper, was hit on Friday March 22 by eight Russian missiles which inflicted “very significant damage” without causing immediate danger to the population, said the Ukrainian prosecutor’s office.

The missiles hit the power plant located north of the city of Zaporizhia (South), and caused it to be shut down, Yuri Belousov, head of war crimes investigations at the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office, explained on television. while ensuring that there was no risk of the dam breaking.

“This is the most massive attack on energy facilities in the past year, that’s for surehas declared Mr. Beloussov, according to the Ukrainian media Censor.net. We can say that with today’s attack the Russians have repeatedly attacked 136 energy facilities in Ukraine since the full-scale invasion. »

Following this attack, a leak ” in large scale “ of hydrocarbons in the Dnieper occurred, according to the State Environmental Inspectorate.

At the same time, explosions rang out in kyiv, Kharkiv, Odessa and Lviv. Russian bombings killed five people and injured around twenty others in the regions of Zaporizhia (South) and Khmelnytsky (West) during the night from Thursday to Friday.

Power cuts

The Russian army claimed to have acted in retaliation for recent attacks on territories bordering Ukraine, which were themselves responses to the daily bombing of Ukrainian cities. In Moscow, the spokesperson for the Russian presidency, Dmitry Peskov, admitted that Russia was “in a state of war”.

According to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, the targets of this attack were “power plants, high voltage lines, a hydroelectric dam, residences and even a trolleybus”. These strikes caused power cuts in at least seven Ukrainian regions and damaged “tens” of installations, noted the Ukrainian operator Ukrenergo.

Ukraine’s second city, Kharkiv, which had nearly a million and a half inhabitants before the war, is deprived of electricity and heating because the bombings “severely damaged” energy infrastructure, lamented its mayor, Ihor Terekhovbelieving that it was the attack ” more powerful “ against his city since the start of the war.

The Ukrainian energy minister, German Galushchenkofor his part, judged that this night raid had been “the biggest attack on the Ukrainian energy industry [lancée] lately “.

The French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Stéphane Séjournécondemned these strikes “with the greatest firmness”. “These strikes (…) constitute a new violation of international law by Russia, which relentlessly pursues its strategy of intimidation against Ukraine and its supporters, with disregard for the lives of Ukrainian civilians.he clarified.