KYIV (Reuters) – Ukraine’s state hydropower company said on Friday a Russian strike hit Ukraine’s largest dam, the DniproHES in Zaporizhzhia, but that there was no risk of a breach, while power infrastructure in other regions was also hit, officials said.
“There is currently a fire at the station. Emergency services and energy workers are working on the spot, dealing with the consequences of numerous airstrikes,” said Ukrhydroenerho, which runs Ukraine’s network of dams.
Ukraine’s energy minister, Herman Halushchenko, said it was the largest attack on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure in the recent past.
“The goal is not just to damage, but to try again, like last year, to cause a large-scale failure of the country’s energy system,” he wrote on Facebook.
In western Khmelnytskyi region, Suspilne cited a local official that one person had been killed and more injured by a Russian attack that damaged critical infrastructure.
The mayor of the eastern city of Kharkiv, Ihor Terekhov, said traffic lights in Ukraine’s second-largest city were not working as a result of strikes on power facilities.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian public broadcaster Suspilne cited the country’s largest private energy company DTEK as saying that Russia had launched a mass attack on energy facilities and hit some of the company’s thermal power plants.
The company warned of power outages in the south-eastern region of Dnipropetrovsk, according to the broadcaster.
(Reporting by Max Hunder, additional reporting by Olzhas Auyezov in Almaty; Editing by Tom Hogue and Gerry Doyle)
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