A Russian missile strike hit a major thermal power station in the city of Burshtyn in western Ukraine on Wednesday, the region’s governor said, the latest in a wave of attacks on critical infrastructure ahead of winter.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who said this week that 30% of Ukrainian power stations had been hit by strikes, met senior officials on Wednesday to discuss security at such facilities and the possibility of a breakdown in the energy system.
The latest salvo hit the coal-fired Burshtyn plant in the region of Ivano-Frankivsk that supplies electricity to three western regions and to 5 million consumers – more than 10% of Ukraine’s pre-war population.
“Our region experienced missile fire today. The Burshtyn thermal power station was hit, which caused a fire,” Svitlana Onyshchuk, Ivano-Frankivsk’s governor, said in a video statement online.
She said no one was hurt in the strike to the area hundreds of kilometres from the front lines that has until now been relatively unscathed by the war. The same facility was hit by four missiles on October 10, the governor said.
Serhiy Borzov, governor of the Vinnytsia region in western Ukraine, said Russia had also carried out attacks on energy facilities in his region on Wednesday.
He said there had been “hits” but gave no details.
In the capital, air defences shot down incoming missiles, Kyiv’s mayor said. Three people were injured in drone attacks in the northeast region of Chernyhiv, a senior official from the president’s office said.
Air defences took down four incoming cruise missiles launched by Russian warplanes on Wednesday as well as 10 Shahed-136 “kamikaze” drones, Ukraine’s air force said in a statement. Iran denies supplying drones to Russia.
