A massive missile and drone attack destroyed one of Ukraine's largest power plants and damaged others, officials said Thursday, part of a renewed Russian campaign targeting energy infrastructure.
The Trypilska plant, which was the biggest energy supplier for the Kyiv, Cherkasy and Zhytomyr regions, was struck numerous times, destroying the transformer, turbines and generators and leaving the plant ablaze.
As the first drone approached, workers hid in a shelter, saving their lives, said Andrii Gota, chairman of the supervisory board of the state company that runs the plant, Centrenergo.
Speaking in Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin cast the attacks on Ukrainian energy facilities as a response to Ukrainian strikes that targeted Russian oil refineries.
The Trypilska plant supplied electricity to 3 million customers, but none lost power because the grid was able to compensate since demands are low at this time of year. Still, the consequences of the strikes could be felt in the coming months, as air conditioning use ramps up with summer.
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At least 10 other strikes overnight damaged energy infrastructure in Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city. Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said more than 200,000 people in the region, which has been struck repeatedly, were without power.
Ukraine's largest private energy operator, DTEK, described the slew of strikes as one of the most powerful attacks this year, while Energy Minister Herman Halushchenko told reporters it was a "large scale, enormous, missile attack that affected our energy sector very badly."
Russia recently renewed strikes on Ukrainian energy facilities, and attacks last month blacked out large parts of the country — a level of darkness not seen since the first days of the full-scale invasion in 2022.
Troops needed
Meanwhile, Ukraine's parliament passed a controversial law Thursday on how the country will call up new soldiers at a time when it needs to replenish depleted forces that are increasingly struggling to fend off Russia's advance.
Two years after Russia's full-scale invasion captured almost a quarter of Ukraine, the stakes could not be higher for Kyiv. After a string of victories in the first year of the war, fortunes have turned for the Ukrainian military, which is dug in, outgunned and outnumbered.
The country desperately needs more troops — and more ammunition — at a time when doubts about the supply of Western aid are increasing.
The mobilization law was first envisioned after Ukraine's summer counteroffensive failed to gain significant ground last year — and authorities realized the country was in for a longer fight.
In December, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukraine's military wanted to mobilize up to 500,000 more troops. Army chief Oleksandr Syrskyi since revised that figure down because soldiers can be rotated from the rear, but officials have not said how many are needed.
The law — which was watered down from its original draft — will make it easier to identify every draft-eligible man in the country, where many dodge conscription by avoiding contact with authorities.
Under the law, men aged 18 to 60 will be required to carry documents showing they registered with the military and present them when asked, according to Oksana Zabolotna, an analyst for the watchdog group Center for United Actions. Also, any man who applies for a state service at a consulate abroad will be registered for military service.
It remains unclear how the measure will ensure all draft-eligible men are registered. In that way, it "does not fulfill the main declared goal," she said.
The law also provides incentives to soldiers, such as cash bonuses or money toward buying a house or car — perks that Zabolotna said Ukraine can't afford.
It's not clear how many new conscripts the law might lead to — and it's also unclear whether Ukraine, with its ongoing ammunition shortages, would be able to arm large numbers of new soldiers without a fresh injection of Western aid.
About 1 million Ukrainians are in uniform, including about 300,000 serving on the front lines.
Lawmakers dragged their feet for months over the mobilization law, and it is expected to be unpopular. It comes about a week after Ukraine lowered the draft-eligible age for men from 27 to 25.
The law will become effective a month after Zelenskyy signs it — and it's unclear if and when he will. It took him months to sign the law reducing conscription age.
Thursday's vote came after the parliamentary defense committee removed a key provision from the bill that would rotate out troops who had served 36 months of combat. Lawmaker Oleksii Honcharenko said in a Telegram post that he was shocked by the move.
Exhausted soldiers, on the front lines since Russia invaded in February 2022, currently have no means of rotating out for rest. But considering the scale and intensity of the war, devising a system of rest will prove difficult.
A soldier taken off the front lines because of injury told The Associated Press his comrades badly need respite.
"Of course, I want the boys to be released (from military duty), at least after 36 months. There are no more thoughts, I want the boys to have some rest," said the soldier, who only gave his name as Kostyantyn for security reasons.