Russian shelling across Ukraine cuts power to Zaporizhia power plant

By Olena Harmash

KIEV, March 9 (Reuters) – Russian missiles knocked out power to Europe’s largest nuclear power plant on Thursday in a series of attacks across Ukraine as Ukrainian defenders repelled fierce assaults against the besieged city of Bakhmut.

The Zaporizhia nuclear power plant, captured by the Russian military a year ago, was dependent on backup generators after Russian missiles damaged Ukrainian infrastructure that supplied the plant with electricity, Ukraine’s state-owned electricity company said. Energoatom in a statement.

“The last link between the occupied Zaporizhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) and the Ukrainian electricity system has been severed,” Energoatom said in a statement.

The fifth and sixth reactors have been shut down and the electrical energy needed to operate the plant is supplied by 18 diesel generators, which have enough fuel for 10 days, Energoatom added.

Mikhailo Podolyak, adviser to the Ukrainian president, said Russian soldiers launched massive missile attacks overnight.

“Explosions were reported in most regions: infrastructure and residential areas were affected. The ZNPP is without electricity,” Podolyak said in a post on the social network Twitter, adding that parts of Ukraine were without electricity or water.

The capital Kyiv, the Black Sea port of Odessa and the country’s second largest city Kharkov were hit by missiles, in a wide arc of targets stretching from Yitomir, Vynnytsia and Rivne in the west , to the Dnieper and Poltava, in the center of the country, according to the Ukrainian authorities.

No casualties have been reported at this time.

Air raid sirens sounded over Kiev for seven hours as Ukrainian air defenses shot down drones and all manner of cruise missiles, although preliminary reports said a hypersonic missile hit its target.

“Unfortunately, a Kinzhal-type missile hit an infrastructure object,” said Serhi Popko, head of the kyiv region military authority.

Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko reported explosions in the capital’s southwest. Using the Telegram messaging app, the mayor said 40% of consumers in kyiv had lost power.

Odessa region governor Maksym Marchenko said on Telegram that a massive missile attack hit an electrical installation in the port city, knocking out power. Residential areas were also affected.

Kharkiv region governor Oleh Synehubov said the city and region had been hit by 15 attacks, the targets of which included infrastructure. Other attacks were reported in the central city of the Dnieper and in parts of the country.

On Thursday morning, the Ukrainian military said Russian forces were attacking the mining town of Bakhmut and other eastern towns including Kupyansk, Liman, Avdiivka and Shakhtarsk.

“During the last day, our soldiers repelled more than 110 attacks,” the Ukrainian military said.

Russia, which has gone months without a significant victory on the battlefield, set its sights on Bakhmut last August. The fighting in the city has been some of the bloodiest since the invasion of Ukraine began in February last year, but so far the Russian army only claims to have taken the eastern half of the city.

“The enemy continued their attacks and showed no signs of letting up in their assault on the town of Bakhmut,” the Ukrainian Armed Forces General Staff said on Facebook. “Our defenders repelled attacks on Bakhmut and surrounding communities.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a video address late Wednesday that the battle for Bakhmut and the surrounding Donbass region was “our first priority”.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, leader of the Russian mercenary group Wagner, claimed that his fighters had captured the eastern part of Bakhmut.

“Everything east of the Bakhmutka River is completely under Wagner’s control,” Prigozhin said in a Telegram message.

The river cuts Bakhmut, on the border of the Ukrainian province of Donetsk, which is already largely under Russian occupation. The city center is on the west side of the river.

Prigozhin has already made premature declarations of success on other occasions. Reuters was unable to verify the situation on the ground.

Ukrainian military analyst Oleh Zhdanov said in a video commentary that in addition to Zabakhmutka district on the eastern outskirts of Bakhmut, the Russians captured Ilyinivka district and advanced around Svatovo on the northern side, also advancing near from Avdiivka, to the south.

Irina Vereshchuk, Ukraine’s deputy prime minister, said fewer than 4,000 civilians – including 38 children – remained in Bakhmut out of a pre-war population of around 70,000.

A Ukrainian military drone showed the extent of the destruction in Bakhmut, filming burning buildings and smoke billowing from residential areas.

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NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told a meeting of European Union defense ministers in Stockholm that Russia was sending more troops into combat.

“They suffered heavy losses, but at the same time we can’t rule out that Bakhmut will eventually go down in the next few days,” Stoltenberg said.

EU defense ministers agreed to speed up the supply of artillery ammunition and purchase more shells to help the Ukrainian army.

Ukraine is expected to launch a counter-offensive when the weather improves and it receives more military aid from the West, including tanks.

Russia, which has said it has annexed nearly 20% of Ukrainian territory, says taking Bakhmut would be a step towards taking the entire industrial region of Donbass on its border.

Western analysts say Bakhmut has little strategic value, although his capture would be a boost for Russian President Vladimir Putin and his army after a series of setbacks in what they call their “special military operation” to eliminate the alleged security threats stemming from Ukraine’s ties to the West.

(Reuters Newsroom Reporting, Writing by Cynthia Osterman, Stephen Coates and Simon Cameron-Moore; Editing by Grant McCool and Robert Birsel; Editing in Spanish by Dario Fernández)