A Russian mass missile and drone attack overnight on Dec. 6 has once again hammered Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, hitting substations, generation facilities, and disconnecting one of the power lines that supplies the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.
According to Ukraine’s Air Force, Russia launched 653 Shahed-type attack drones, 36 cruise missiles, and 17 ballistic missiles at targets across the country. Sixty strikes were recorded at 29 locations.
“The main targets of these strikes are once again energy infrastructure,” President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on Telegram.
“The Russians’ goal is to hurt millions of Ukrainians, and they have already fallen so low that they launch missiles at peaceful cities on St. Nicholas Day.”
Explosions were reported in Poltava, Lutsk, Odesa, Zaporizhzhia, and Bila Tserkva during the attacks. Russian strikes damaged electricity generation, distribution, and transmission facilities in Kyiv, Chernihiv, Lviv, Odesa, Zaporizhzhia, Dnipropetrovsk, Mykolaiv, and Kharkiv oblasts, the Energy Ministry reported.
In Chernihiv Oblast, Russian drones hit a residential area as well as critical infrastructure in both the region and Chernihiv city, the State Emergency Services reported.
The attack was “quite severe” for Ukraine’s power system, Vitaliy Zaichenko, head of Ukraine’s state grid operator Ukrenergo, told the Kyiv Independent.
Strikes hit Ukrenergo’s substations and generation facilities, and disconnected one of the two power lines supplying the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.
“Other nuclear power plants are now operating below their full capacity for safety reasons,” he added.
The Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant lost all off-site power for half an hour, the 11th time during Russia’s full-scale invasion, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) wrote on X. The 330 kilovolt line was reconnected, but the 750 kilovolt line remains disconnected, the agency added.
Russian strikes also hit thermal power plants owned by DTEK, Ukraine’s largest private energy company, in the sixth mass attack since October. While the company didn’t name the plants for security reasons, it disclosed that power generation equipment was “seriously damaged.”
As of the morning, there are power outages in Odesa, Chernihiv, Kyiv, Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk, and Mykolaiv oblasts. Hourly blackout schedules are in place in all regions in Ukraine, the Energy Ministry said.
There were also civilian casualties, with at least eight people injured, Ukraine’s Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko wrote on Telegram. Of the wounded, three were in Kyiv Oblast, three in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, and two in Lviv Oblast.
Kyiv Oblast Governor Mykola Kalashnyk reported that a 42-year-old man suffered shrapnel wounds in the city of Fastiv, located about 60 kilometers (37 miles) southwest of Kyiv’s center.
Earlier reports said that the city’s main train station was struck in the attack. Ukraine’s railway authority said that Russia had undertaken a “massive shelling of railway infrastructure” in Fastiv.
Zelensky described the attack on the railway station as “militarily senseless.”
Kalashnyk also noted that two women, a 46-year-old and a 40-year-old, suffered injuries in the Vyshhorodskyi district, just north of Kyiv. One of the injured women has been hospitalized with shrapnel wounds, the governor added.
Ukraine’s State Emergency Service also reported that fires had broken out in a warehouse in Novi Petrivtsi and at a home in Bucha in Kyiv Oblast.
In Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, regional Governor Vladislav Haivanenko reported that fires had broken out in several cities during the attack, including in strikes on homes in Pavlohrad as well as local infrastructure in Kryvyi Rih.
An 11-year-old boy was also injured in Nikopol during the attack.
In the western city of Lutsk, Mayor Ihor Polishchuk reported that several food warehouses had caught fire.
Warehouses with food and medicine were also burning in the cities of Dnipro and Bila Tserkva in Kyiv Oblast, Klymenko reported.
Poland’s Air Force said on social media that it had scrambled fighter jets to protect Polish airspace amid reports of the hours-long attack on western Ukraine.
Information on the extent of damage caused or the targets of attacks was not immediately available in all regions.
Russian forces have regularly attacked Kyiv and its surrounding regions in recent months amid U.S. efforts to negotiate the end of Russia’s war in Ukraine.
In the latest mass missile and drone attack on Kyiv on Nov. 13-14, seven people were killed and 29 others were injured.
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