Russia fired missiles at Ukraine’s energy infrastructure

Kyiv, Ukraine — Early Thursday morning, Russia launched a massive missile attack on Ukrainian territory, hitting energy infrastructure in the first attack of its magnitude in three weeks. Ukrainian officials report injuries and hits on residential buildings.

Air raid sirens wailed for several hours across Ukraine, including in the capital, Kyiv, where explosions occurred in two of the city’s western districts. Defense systems were activated throughout the country, and it was not clear how many missiles hit targets or were intercepted.

Mayor of Kyiv Vitaliy Klitschko said that explosions thundered in the Goloseevsky district, emergency services went there. In the Svyatoshinsky district, also on the western outskirts of the city, two people were injured, cars were on fire there, the mayor added.

According to Kharkiv Governor Oleg Sinegubov, in eastern Ukraine, 15 rockets struck Kharkiv and its environs in the northeast, hitting residential buildings. He promised to reveal more details about the extent of damage or casualties in Ukraine’s second largest city.

“The objects of critical infrastructure have again been targeted by the occupiers,” the Telegram message says.

Kharkiv mayor Igor Terekhov said on Telegram that there were “problems with electricity” in some areas of the city.

The governor of the South Odessa region, Maxim Marchenko, also reported on the attacks on Odessa, saying that energy facilities and residential buildings were damaged. Marchenko warned in Telegram that people stay in shelters.

The Zaporozhye nuclear power plant, occupied by Russian troops, has lost electricity as a result of rocket strikes, according to the state nuclear power plant operator Energoatom.

This was the sixth time the station has been taken off the grid since it was handed over to Russia a few months ago, forcing it to rely on 18 diesel generators to keep the station running for 10 days, Energoatom said. Nuclear power plants require constant power to operate cooling systems and prevent meltdowns.

“The countdown has begun,” Energoatom said.

Ukraine’s Energy Minister Herman Galushchenko condemned the missile strikes as “another barbaric massive attack on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure”, saying in a Facebook post that the targets were in Kyiv, Mykolaiv, Kharkiv, Zaporizhia, Odessa, Dnepropetrovsk and Zhytomyr regions.

Ukrainian railways reported power cuts in some sections, 15 trains were delayed up to an hour.

In Kyiv, Dnepropetrovsk, Donetsk and Odessa regions, preventive emergency power outages have been applied, a DTEK supplier said. Klitschko said that 40% of Kyiv consumers were left without heating due to emergency power outages. According to him, the water supply was uninterrupted.

Even more explosions were recorded in the northern city of Chernigov and the west of the Lviv region, as well as in the cities of Dnipro, Lutsk and Rivne. Ukrainian media also report explosions in the western regions of Ivano-Frankivsk and Ternopil.

Russia has been carrying out massive missile strikes on Ukraine since October last year. Initially, shelling of the country’s energy infrastructure took place on a weekly basis, plunging entire cities into darkness, but over time they have become more dispersed, and commentators have suggested that Moscow may be stockpiling ammunition.

The last massive shelling took place on 16 February.