KYIV (Reuters) -Russian missiles and drones destroyed a large electricity plant near Kyiv and hit power facilities in several regions of Ukraine on Thursday, officials said, ramping up pressure on the embattled energy system as Kyiv runs low on air defences.
The major attack more than two years since Russia’s full-scale invasion completely destroyed the Trypilska coal-powered thermal power plant near the capital, a senior official at the company that runs the facility told Reuters.
Footage shared on social media showed a fire raging at the large Soviet-era facility and black smoke belching from it. Reuters was able to confirm the location of the video as the Trypilska station.
“We need air defence and other defence support, not eye-closing and long discussions,” President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Telegram, condemning the attacks as “terror”.
The Russian defence ministry said it hit fuel and energy facilities in Ukraine in what it described as a massive retaliatory strike using drones and high-precision, long-range weapons from air and sea.
The strikes were a response to Ukrainian drone attacks on Russia’s oil, gas and energy facilities, it said.
Kyiv’s appeals for urgent air defence supplies from the West have grown increasingly desperate since Russia renewed its long-range aerial assaults on the Ukrainian energy system last month.
The attacks, which hammered thermal and hydroelectric power plants, have caused fears about the resilience of an energy system that was hobbled by a Russian air campaign in the war’s first winter.
Ukraine’s air force commander said air defences took down 18 of the incoming missiles and 39 drones. The attack used 82 missiles and drones in total, the military said.
The destroyed power plant outside Kyiv, a major power supplier for the capital and Cherkasy and Zhytomyr regions, is the third and last facility owned by state-owned energy company Centrenergo.
“Everything is destroyed,” Andriy Gota, head of the supervisory board of the company, said when asked about the situation at Centrenergo.
The Trypilska plant was the biggest energy facility near Kyiv and was built to have a capacity of 1,800 megawatt hours, more than the pre-war needs of Ukraine’s biggest city.
DIRE SITUATION
The Ukrenergo grid operator said its substations and power generating facilities had been damaged in attacks on the regions of Odesa, Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia, Lviv and Kyiv.
Ukraine’s largest private electricity company DTEK, which lost 80% of its generating capacity in attacks on March 22 and March 29, said Russia’s attacks hit two of its power stations, inflicting serious damage.
On Thursday afternoon, Russian forces attacked a thermal power station in the Sumy region in northern Ukraine with guided bombs. The scale of damage was not immediately clear, though the regional administration said there were no casualties.
The strikes also attacked two underground storage facilities where Ukraine stores natural gas, including some owned by foreign companies, energy company Naftogaz said. The facilities continued to operate, it added.
“The situation in Ukraine is dire; there is not a moment to lose,” said U.S. ambassador Bridget Brink, adding that 10 missiles struck critical infrastructure in the Kharkiv area alone.
The grid operator issued a statement urging Ukrainians to minimise their use of electricity in the peak evening hours on Thursday so as not to overload the system.
The region of Kharkiv, which borders Russia and already has long, rolling blackouts in place, was forced to cut electricity for 200,000 people, presidential aide Oleksiy Kuleba said.
Ukraine has warned it could run out of air defence munitions if Russia keeps up the intensity of its strikes and that it is already having to make difficult decisions about what to defend.
There has been a slowdown in vital Western assistance and a major U.S. aid package has been blocked by Republicans in Congress for many months, Ukraine has said.
Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said Russia’s overnight attack used six ballistic missiles, which can hit targets within minutes and are much harder to shoot down. Kyiv says that is why it needs U.S.-made Patriot air defences.
“Ukraine remains the only country in the world facing ballistic strikes. There is currently no other place for ‘Patriots’ to be,” Kuleba wrote on X.
(Reporting by Pavel Polityuk, Anastasiia Malenko and Max Hunder; writing by Tom Balmforth; Editing by Devika Syamnath, Angus MacSwan and Ros Russell)