KYIV (Reuters) -More than 400,000 Ukrainian consumers remained without electricity as of midday on Thursday following a recent large-scale Russian attack on Ukraine’s western regions, energy officials said.
The attack led to a decrease in electricity production at Ukrainian nuclear power plants.
Russia has sharply increased the intensity and number of its attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure in recent months, targeting gas, energy and distribution facilities and plunging entire cities into darkness.
Ukraine generates more than half of its electricity at three nuclear power plants, but damage to power lines and transformers has forced the plants to reduce their output, a representative of the national nuclear energy company Energoatom told Reuters.
The International Atomic Energy Agency also confirmed the reduction in Ukraine’s nuclear power output after Russian attacks on Tuesday night as the power stations lost the connection to their high-voltage power lines.
Energoatom said the situation remained unchanged as of Thursday, while the head of Ukrainian power grid operator Ukrenergo Vitaliy Zaichenko told national television that power supply restrictions were in effect across virtually the entire country, with blackouts lasting up to 16 hours.
The frontline regions of Chernihiv, Sumy, Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk and the Black Sea port of Odesa are the worst affected in terms of electricity supplies, he said.
Ukraine’s nuclear energy sector has been rocked this month by a corruption scandal that has led to the dismissal of the country’s energy and justice ministers.
(Reporting by Pavel PolityukEditing by Gareth Jones)
