War
After Russian attack: damage to Ukraine’s power system
A Russian soldier guards an area of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in May 2022: The electricity here currently comes via a replacement line. photo
© -/AP/dpa
Russia is bombarding Ukraine with a barrage of missiles and drones. Eight projectiles hit one large dam alone.
As a result of one of the most violent air strikes in more than two years of war of aggression, Russia caused serious damage to the country’s energy system Ukraine. There was a complete power outage in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv.
The country’s largest hydroelectric power plant on the Dnipro River near Zaporizhzhia was shut down damaged. At times, the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which was occupied by Russian troops, only received electricity via a replacement line. According to local authorities, five dead and more than two dozen injured had been counted by midday on Friday.
Practically all parts of Ukraine were targeted, from Lviv in the west to Donetsk in the east, from Kharkiv and Sumy in the north to Odessa and Mykolaiv in the south. According to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Moscow deployed more than 60 drones and almost 90 rockets and cruise missiles of various types. The Ukrainian armed forces were only able to intercept 60 percent of them.
“The world sees the targets of Russian terrorists absolutely clearly: power plants and power lines, the dam of a hydroelectric power plant, ordinary apartment buildings and even a trolleybus,” Zelensky said. His words expressed disappointment at the lack of foreign arms aid. “Russian missiles are not delayed – unlike aid packages for Ukraine. Shahed drones are not undecided – unlike some politicians. It is important to understand the cost of delays and postponed decisions,” he wrote on the X network (formerly Twitter ).
Ukraine’s largest hydroelectric power station hit
According to the prosecutor’s office, more than 130 objects in the country were damaged. Eight rockets alone hit the DniproHes hydroelectric power station in Zaporizhzhia. Both power plant blocks in Ukraine’s largest hydroelectric power plant were damaged. One block is uncertain whether it can be repaired, said the director of the hydroelectric utility Ukrhidroenerho, Ihor Sirota. “We’re losing the power plant.”
There was apparently no threat of the dam breaking. Destruction would mean a similar devastating flood for southern Ukraine as the blowing up of the Kakhovka dam in 2023. As the Ukrainian power grid operator Ukrenerho announced, there were supply problems in seven areas. The country’s electricity deficit had to be offset by imports from neighboring Poland, Romania and Slovakia. The Ukrainian Railways also reported massive power outages on unspecified routes. Train traffic there is guaranteed by diesel locomotives.
Worst attack on Kharkiv since the beginning of the war
Especially in the winter of 2022/23, Russia tried to paralyze the Ukrainian energy supply across the board with missile attacks. That didn’t work, partly because the Ukrainian air defense system was better equipped with Western help. This winter there were several large-scale Russian missile attacks over the New Year. Then on Thursday night a wave of rockets targeted the capital Kiev. Zelensky said that cities like Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia also needed protection from US Patriot anti-aircraft systems.
There was a complete power outage in Kharkiv on Friday. Mayor Ihor Terekhov described the rocket attack on Ukraine’s second-largest city as the worst since the Russian invasion began more than two years ago. The rocket strikes targeted the main energy supply facilities in the city of over a million inhabitants. Along with the electricity, water, heating and electrically operated local transport were also temporarily interrupted. Hospitals met their electricity needs with generators.
Attacks on the Russian border area
According to official reports, at least one person was killed and several injured when Ukraine shelled the western Russian regions of Belgorod and Kursk. In Belgorod, a woman was killed by an impact while walking her dogs, Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said on Telegram on Friday. Two other people were injured and taken to hospital. In addition, houses and cars were damaged. The governor of the neighboring Kursk region, Roman Starovoit, also reported night shelling. Belgorod and Kursk serve as staging areas for the Russian army’s invasion of Ukraine. As a result, the regions have recently come under increased fire from pro-Ukrainian militias.
Ukraine continues drone attacks on Russian oil facilities
According to senior politicians in Kiev, Ukraine will not allow the USA to persuade it into drone attacks on Russian oil refineries. From a military perspective, the oil facilities are legitimate targets for Ukraine, said Deputy Prime Minister Olha Stefanischyna, responsible for European and transatlantic integration, in Kiev.
The British newspaper Financial Times had previously reported that the US government was urging Kiev to stop these attacks. The background is the fear of an escalation and rising global oil prices before the US presidential election. In recent weeks, the Ukrainian secret services have systematically bombarded Russian oil refineries with combat drones far behind the front, for example in Ryazan, Kstovo near Nizhny Novgorod and in Krasnodar. Twelve attacks are known.