‘Significant Damage’ to Thermal Power Plants in Latest Attack – Ukraine’s Energy Operator

Russian attacks on Sunday morning have damaged Ukraine’s thermal power plants, said one of the country’s major energy operators DTEK. 

In a social media update, DTEK said its thermal power plants were targeted by Russia, and that its “energy equipment” received “significant damage” before adding that the company is “currently assessing the extent of the damage and information about casualties.”

“As soon as sites are made safe, DTEK employees will assess the damage and immediately begin work to restore functionality,” the company said in its update at 10 a.m. 

In a comment to Kyiv Post, a manager at DTEK described the attack on Sunday morning as a “really strong hit.”

Earlier, Ukraine’s Energy Minister Herman Halushchenko said energy generation and transmission facilities were targeted in the attack and added that urgent shutdowns were introduced, leading to blackouts across the country. 

Russia launched a massive attack using dozens of drones and missiles against Ukraine on Sunday morning, which persisted intermittently over multiple hours with explosions heard in multiple cities. 

DTEK also noted the latest attack marked Russia’s 8th major attack on DTEK facilities and the 10th overall massive strike on Ukraine’s energy system this year, where the company’s facilities have been under attack for over 190 times since Russia’s 2022 invasion began. 

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Deprived of the unrestricted use of long-range Western weapons to attack Russian bases, Ukraine has come up with its own weapons that blur the line between missiles and drones to fill the gap.

It said the last major attack took place on Aug. 26. The attack disconnected several Ukrainian nuclear power plants from the power grid at the time. 

Russia began targeting Ukrainian power plants early this year, which deprived Ukraine the majority of its generation capacity – leaving less than 10 gigawatts (GW) out of the 56 GW pre-war nameplate capacity available by Kyiv Post’s estimations – and led to extensive blackouts this summer. 

However, Ukraine is believed to have brought the figure back up to 16-18 GW through various means, according to a comment on Nov. 7 by the acting chairman of Ukrenergo, Ukraine’s energy transmission operator.