Russia attacks Ukraine’s electricity industry broadly

Russia launched a big attack on Ukraine’s electric system on Friday. According to Russia, it was in response to recent attacks on them. This could make the war between the two countries worse, especially after Vladimir Putin was re-elected as president.

A lot of people in Ukraine lost power in a few cities. At least five people died and the biggest hydroelectric plant in the country was damaged. This caused the nuclear plant, which has been dangerous during the war, to lose power for a short time.

Russia launched over 60 exploding drones and 90 missiles in a very harsh attack on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, according to Ukrainian officials. This is the most brutal attack since the war started in 2022.

Kharkiv, the second-biggest city in Ukraine, suffered the most damage, officials said. The attack happened a day after Russia shot 31 missiles into the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been asking Western countries for more air defense systems and weapons. He has been asking for this for several weeks and during this time, the U.S has given $60 billion. Congress cannot agree on aid, so it is delayed.

“Russian missiles come quickly, unlike aid to our state,” Zelenskyy said. It’s crucial to know how much it costs when things are delayed or decisions are put off.

Russia’s military said that the attacks on Friday were a form of revenge. Ukraine has been firing more shells into Russia’s Belgorod region near its northeastern border. They have also been using drones to attack Russian oil refineries and other energy facilities.

Ukraine attacked Russia on Friday and killed one person and injured at least three, local officials said.

Putin said that Ukraine is trying to scare people and disrupt the election that just ended on Sunday. And he promised to retaliate.

The day after he said he won, Putin said that Russia wants to make a safe area inside eastern Ukraine to guard against faraway attacks and raids from across the border.

Russia has done better in fighting than Ukraine in the last few months. Ukrainian soldiers are tired and don’t have enough people and weapons. The battle line is over 1,000 kilometres long.

When Putin invaded in 2022, he called it a “special military operation,” and his officials mostly avoided saying “war. ” But on Friday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told a Russian newspaper that when the West joined Ukraine in the fighting, it became a war for Russia.

During the winter of 2022-23, Russia attacked Ukraine’s energy system, which led to many power outages in the country. Many people in Ukraine and the West thought that Russia might use the same strategy again this winter, but instead Russia attacked Ukraine’s defense industries.

Russia has used advanced missiles and cheap drones from Iran to overwhelm and weaken Ukraine’s air defenses during the strikes.

Volodymyr Kudrytskyi, leader of Ukrenergo (the national utility company), said that Friday’s attack was the biggest on Ukraine’s energy system since the war started.

“This attack was very dangerous because the enemy used different types of weapons, like kamikaze drones, ballistic and cruise missiles,” he said.

Kudrytskyi claims that Russia tried to destroy important power plants in Kharkiv, which left at least 700,000 people without electricity. He thinks that there are many customers in other areas who also don’t have power, maybe hundreds of thousands.

Oleksiy Kuleba, who works with Zelenskyy, said that 31 people got hurt in the attacks. Also, 200,000 people in Odesa don’t have electricity all the time now. He said that electricity was restored for most of the 400,000 customers in Dnipropetrovsk region.

The big Dnipro hydroelectric power plant, which is the biggest in Ukraine, stopped working because it was hit by at least six missiles and got badly damaged. Ihor Syrota, the leader of Ukrhidroenergo company which manages the country’s hydroelectric plants, said they lost about one third of their power production. This is a big problem for the Ukrainian energy system.

Syrota said it’s hard to know how much the plant was damaged because the equipment is buried under concrete and metal debris from the explosions. He also said it will take a long time to fix everything.

The strikes caused a fire at the Dnipro plant, which provides electricity to the nuclear power plant in Zaporizhzhia. This power plant is the biggest one in Europe. The nuclear plant lost its power for a few hours before it was fixed, according to Rafael Grossi, who is in charge of the International Atomic Energy Agency. He said this on Friday. The Zaporizhzhia plant in Ukraine has been taken over by Russian soldiers since the invasion started, and there is a chance that fighting nearby could cause a nuclear disaster.

The dam at the hydroelectric station is not at risk of breaking, according to the country’s hydroelectric authority. A dam breaking could stop the nuclear plant from getting what it needs and could cause big floods like what happened last year when a dam on the Dnieper River collapsed.