According to a series of reports in TASS that cite Ukrainian officials, the mass strikes overnight (Friday-Saturday) did enormous damage to Ukrainian power plants. Ukraine’s acting president Volodymyr Zelenskyy posted: “Unfortunately, there is significant damage to energy facilities, and this has affected the energy situation throughout the country. There are significant power outages.” He added that damage was caused to energy facilities on which “the operation of Ukrainian nuclear power plants depends.”
Burshtyn Mayor Vasily Andriyeshin reported that the Burshtyn thermal power station in the Ivano-Frankovsk region in western Ukraine has stopped working due to explosion-related damage, leaving the city without water and heat: “The damage is very serious. The station is now at zero. No one knows what will happen next because we have just started clearing the rubble... However, we can see that we have no heat or water.”
TASS noted, earlier, the report of Ukrainian Energy Minister Denis Shmygal, that explosions had rocked the Burshtyn and Dobrotvorskaya thermal power stations. A series of explosions was also recorded in the city of Rovno in western Ukraine, in Vinnitsa and in Yelizavetgrad in the central part of the country. Critical infrastructure facilities in the Lvov and Rovno regions were damaged.
Kiev residents receive electricity for only 1.5 to 2 hours/day due to energy sector problems caused by earlier explosions at several Ukrainian energy facilities, the Energy Ministry reported. It added that the country’s energy system “remains extremely difficult” and emergency power cuts have been introduced in most regions of Ukraine. “The loss of capacity... has created an additional significant electricity deficit, which is extremely difficult to cover, so the coming days will be difficult.”
