RUSSIA HAMMER AWAY AT POWER PLANTS AS UKRAINE STRUGGLE TO KEEP THEIR LIGHTS ON

 Ukraine fights to keep the lights on as Russia hammers power plants

Image source,BBC/Joe Phua

Image caption,

Russia is targeting Ukraine's energy infrastructure ahead of the brutally cold winter

Amid the monstrous heaps of twisted metal, pools of congealed oil and walls pockmarked by shrapnel, one incongruous detail catches my eye.

Patches of snow. Inside a thermal power station.

With another Ukrainian winter arriving, the vast turbine hall is full of activity. Engineers, dwarfed by the enormous scale of the place, repairing what they can, removing what they can’t, after a recent Russian air strike hit this facility.

For security reasons, we’re not allowed to say where we are or when the visit occurred. Nor can we describe the extent of the damage, or whether the plant is still working.

Russia, we’re told, collects every scrap of information in order to draw up its next target list.

On Thursday, Moscow mounted its second mass attack on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure in less than two weeks.

Ten such attacks this year have placed an enormous burden on the entire energy system.

Before the first of this month’s attacks, on 17 November, Ukraine had already lost 9GW of generation capacity. That’s about half of the power consumed during last winter’s peak heating season.

FULL ARTICLE AT: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3vlg91yz6po