Kyiv (Brussels Morning Newspaper) – Ukraine imposed a nationwide power supply restriction due to ongoing attacks on energy infrastructure, in which 13 people were reported injured in the southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia, officials said on Thursday.
Russian forces have targeted with regularity Ukraine’s energy sector as winter approaches, temporarily taking power from hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians.
How severe were the Russian strikes on Zaporizhzhia?
Among the 13 people wounded in the attacks on Zaporizhzhia were six children, and five apartment buildings, and infrastructure facilities sustained damage, its governor, Ivan Fedorov, said.
“Individuals are suffering from stress, wounds, concussions, bruises, and fractures,”
said Fedorov.
After another large aerial assault last week, the Prime Minister of Ukraine, Yulia Svyrydenko, stated that Russia was trying to create a
“humanitarian catastrophe in Ukraine to correspond with winter.”
“The strike caused new damage to the energy infrastructure,”
Energy Minister Svitlana Hrynchuk said on the Telegram messaging app on Thursday.
What challenges does Ukraine’s energy sector face this winter?
State-owned railway Ukrzaliznytsia also reported power cuts in the southern region of Mykolaiv that forced delays to train services and led to the use of reserve locomotives. In addition, DTEK, the biggest energy company in Ukraine that is privately owned, announced that Russian troops struck several thermal power plants across Ukraine.
Additionally, the strikes caused fires at the thermal power plant sites and damaged thermal power plant equipment.
“Energy workers immediately began damage assessment and recovery operations after the attacks,”
DTEK stated.
DTEK also said this is the third attack in a month at their thermal power plants. Previous attacks injured three energy workers.
What impact did Ukrainian drone strikes have inside Russia?
Meanwhile, a day earlier, Ukraine also set out to damage Russian energy facilities with drones, causing disruption to air travel across the country, and a number of drones were sent toward Moscow for the third night in a row, the authorities in Russia reported on Wednesday.
Ukraine’s General Staff reported on the Telegram messaging platform that its forces had struck the Mariysky refinery in Mari El, another refinery in Novospasskoye in Ulyanovsk, as well as a gas facility in Budyonnovsk in the southern Stavropol region.
Russian air defence units destroyed a total of 100 Ukrainian drones overnight, including six over the Moscow region, and the rest over 11 regions and the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea, the Russian defence ministry said on Telegram.
