Blackouts across Ukraine as Russia attacks energy grid

Russia has launched its largest attack on Ukrainian energy infrastructure since the war began, Kyiv said yesterday, firing more than 150 missiles and drones and hitting a vast dam over the Dnipro River.

- TOM WATLING

At least five people were killed in the attack and dozens of energy facilities across the country were hit, plunging more than 1 million Ukrainian civilians across seven regions into blackouts. Poland, Romania and Slovakia rushed to supply emergency power.

“The world sees the targets of Russian terrorists as clearly as possible: power plants and energy supply lines, a hydroelectric dam, ordinary residential buildings, even a trolleybus,” wrote Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky on the Telegram messaging platform. “Russia is at war against the ordinary life of people.”

Ukraine’s largest dam, the DniproHES in the southern city of Zaporizhzhia, which supplies electricity to the nearby nuclear plant, was also hit eight times, according to Yuriy Bielousov, head of the war department of the general prosecutor’s office.

The main external power line to the plant was cut off as a result, International Atomic Energy Agency head Rafael Grossi said, though Ukraine’s nuclear energy operator said it was restored several hours later.

Moscow called the strikes “revenge” for deadly cross-border raids earlier this month by pro-Ukrainian military groups and repeated attacks by Kyiv on Russian infrastructure. It is a claim rejected by Andriy Kramarov, a former officer of a Ukrainian anti-missile unit.