Ukraine 'overloaded' by wave of attacks on power stations, says Kyiv aide

Ukraine's air defences are being overwhelmed by concentrated waves of Russian bombing aimed at its power stations, a senior presidential adviser acknowledged in the aftermath of the destruction of an entire plant on Thursday.

- DAN SABBAGH

Mykhailo Podolyak, a key aide in Volodymyr Zelenskiy's office, said that Moscow was adopting new tactics of attacking power stations with up to "10 or 12 missiles at a time", bypassing already stretched Patriot and other missile shields.

"The system is overloaded," Podolyak said in an interview. "Now we have to see whether we can keep the system running, whether we need more air defence systems, especially against anti-ultrasonic ballistic missiles, and whether we can restore the destroyed facilities." On Thursday, Trypilska, a coal and gas-fired plant south of Kyiv, was entirely destroyed after Russian bombing caused a destructive fire in the turbine hall, according to its operator, Centrenergo.

The energy company said that no staff onsite were killed, but the plant had lost 100% of its generating capacity. "The scale of destruction is terrifying," said the chair, Andriy Gota. The attack came three weeks after the company lost the Zmiyivska power station to Russian bombing near the city of Kharkiv.

People living near the plant described the site being hit by missile strikes shortly before 5am on Thursday, causing a fire that took several hours to put out and leaving the main building a charred ruin overlooking a lake near the Dnipro River.

Power supply was uninterrupted, they said, but nearby towns have lost their source of winter heating. In Ukraine, many homes rely on district systems during the heating season that normally ends mid-April.