Russia cuts off power in Ukraine
Ukraine’s biggest power plant has been completely destroyed during targeted air raids against energy infrastructure in Ukraine by Moscow.
Russia launched 82 missiles and drones, many of them directed at substations and generation facilities in Odesa, Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia, Lviv, and Kyiv regions. About a third evaded Ukraine’s air defences.
Centrenergo, one of the country’s largest energy providers, said that its Trypilska power plant, just outside Kyiv, had been levelled during the raid. The facility was the largest provider of electricity for three regions in central Ukraine – Kyiv, Cherkasy and Zhytomyr.
“The scale of the destruction is horrifying,” Andriy Hota, the chairman of Centrenergo, said. “It cannot be assessed in monetary terms. This is the biggest challenge for us in the entire history of the enterprise. But I am convinced we will cope with it.”
The company owns a second plant in the Kharkiv region, which was destroyed in late March, and a third in an area of the Donetsk region that was taken over by Russia in 2022.
The destruction of the Trypilska plant would become a “giant problem” by the winter, but would not be a critical issue for Ukraine during the summer, Mr Hota told the BBC.
He said the plant could be rebuilt using spare parts from Europe, but added that it would be vulnerable to attack without powerful air defences from Ukraine’s allies.
“We can repair. We can do the impossible. But we need protection,” he said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said the airstrikes on Ukraine’s energy grid, which have caused huge blackouts around the country, are part of the Kremlin’s “demilitarisation” of its neighbour.
“We assume that in this way we have an influence on the Ukrainian military-industrial complex,” said Putin during a meeting at the Kremlin with his ally and Belarus counterpart Alexander Lukashenko.
Putin said the strikes were also in response to Kyiv targeting Russia’s energy infrastructure, including oil refineries, as the conflict drags on into its third year.