Its anti-aircraft defense Ukrainian is under great pressure as the country is hit by successive waves Russian bombings targeting its power plants, a senior presidential adviser admitted after an entire factory was destroyed on Thursday.
Mykhailo Podoliak said Moscow is adopting new tactics to attack power plants with up to “10 or 12 missiles at a time,” already bypassing Patriot and other missile shields.
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“The system is overloaded,” Podoliak said in an interview. “Now we have to see if we can keep the system operational, if we need more air defense systems, especially against hypersonic ballistic missiles, and if we can restore the damaged facilities.”
Another video from the fire at the Trypilska thermal power station pic.twitter.com/qi2Q8yzUL4
— NEXTA (@nexta_tv) April 11, 2024
On Thursday, Trypilska, a coal- and gas-fired plant south of Kiev, was destroyed after Russian shelling caused a fire in the turbine room, according to the operator, Centrenergo.
The Trypilska Thermal Power Plant in the Kiev region was totally destroyed last night. pic.twitter.com/bpcTQK1s2A
— ayden (@squatsons) April 11, 2024
The energy company announced that there were no casualties in its personnel, but that 100% of its production capacity was also lost. “The scale of the devastation is terrifying,” said its president, Andri Gota. The attack came three weeks after the same company also claimed the loss of another of its power plants, Zmiiv, which was knocked out of service by Russian bombing near the city of Kharkiv.
People living near the factory described the site as being hit by multiple rockets just before 5 a.m. Thursday, sparking a fire that took several hours to extinguish, leaving the main building a charred ruin overlooking a lake near central river Dnipro of the country.
The disaster meant that nearby towns had lost their source of winter heating. In Ukraine, many homes rely on nearby power generation systems to provide heating during the winter.
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