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RUSIA VS UKRAINA - KYIV. Russian missiles and drones destroyed a large electricity plant near Kyiv and hit power facilities in several regions of Ukraine on Thursday, officials said, ramping up pressure on the embattled energy system as Kyiv runs low on air defences.
The major attack more than two years since Russia's full-scale invasion completely destroyed the Trypilska coal-powered thermal power plant near the capital, a senior official at the company that runs the facility told Reuters.
Footage shared on social media showed a fire raging at the large Soviet-era facility and black smoke belching from it. Reuters was able to confirm the location of the video as the Trypilska station.
"We need air defence and other defence support, not eye-closing and long discussions," President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Telegram, condemning the attacks as "terror".
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The Russian defence ministry said it hit fuel and energy facilities in Ukraine in what it described as a massive retaliatory strike using drones and high-precision, long-range weapons from air and sea.
The strikes were a response to Ukrainian drone attacks on Russia's oil, gas and energy facilities, it said.
Kyiv's appeals for urgent air defence supplies from the West have grown increasingly desperate since Russia renewed its long-range aerial assaults on the Ukrainian energy system last month.
The attacks, which hammered thermal and hydroelectric power plants, have caused fears about the resilience of an energy system that was hobbled by a Russian air campaign in the war's first winter.
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Ukraine's air force commander said air defences took down 18 of the incoming missiles and 39 drones. The attack used 82 missiles and drones in total, the military said.
The destroyed power plant outside Kyiv, a major power supplier for the capital and Cherkasy and Zhytomyr regions, is the third and last facility owned by state-owned energy company Centrenergo.
"Everything is destroyed," Andriy Gota, head of the supervisory board of the company, said when asked about the situation at Centrenergo.
The Trypilska plant was the biggest energy facility near Kyiv and was built to have a capacity of 1,800 megawatt hours, more than the pre-war needs of Ukraine's biggest city.
