Russia was able to destroy a key power plant serving Kyiv because Ukraine ran out of defensive missiles, president Volodymyr Zelensky said on Tuesday.
For three-and-a-half weeks, Russia has launched near continuous strikes on Ukraine’s power grid, leaving over a million people without electricity.
The Trypilska thermal power station, one of the biggest electricity suppliers to the Kyiv region, was destroyed by Russian missiles on April 11.
‘There were 11 missiles flying. We destroyed the first seven. Four destroyed Trypilska. Why? Because there were zero missiles,’ Zelensky said in an interview with US channel PBS.
‘We ran out of missiles to defend Trypilska,’ he said.
Ukraine has grown increasingly frustrated at aid hold-ups from allies, including air defences which it says are urgently needed to repel deadly Russian attacks.
Zelensky’s warning came as overnight storms put further strain on Ukraine’s fragile energy system, cutting power to thousands of people. ‘Due to the bad weather, 173 settlements in four regions are without power supply,’ Ukraine’s energy ministry said Tuesday.
In the central region of Dnipropetrovsk, the worst affected area, over 15,000 people in 96 towns and villages were cut off, it said.
One of the main energy providers, DTEK, said its engineers had worked ‘all night and in the morning’, adding: ‘We are making every effort to restore power to all homes by the end of the day’.
National grid operator Ukrenergo warned earlier this month Ukraine’s energy system needed an overhaul due to the repeated Russian attacks.
Meanwhile, Ukraine said it had identified almost 37,000 people, including military personnel, who are unaccounted for since Russia’s invasion began in February 2022, warning the actual figure may be ‘much higher’.
Calculating the exact number of missing is difficult, as Russian forces still occupy around a fifth of the country and neither side regularly releases data on military casualties.
‘Almost 37,000 people are considered missing — children, civilians and military. These figures may be much higher,’ Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets said.
He said Ukraine and the Red Cross had identified about 1,700 people ‘illegally detained’ by Russia, which he accused of ‘abducting civilians’ since 2014, when war with Moscow-backed separatists in the country’s east first broke out.
Human rights groups have accused Russia of forced disappearances and abducting children in occupied areas, accusations the Kremlin has rejected.
Large swathes of Ukrainian territory have remained under Russian occupation since the beginning of the war, which has devastated whole towns and cities and killed thousands.
The United Nations’ human rights office said in its March report that since Russia’s invasion at least 10,810 people had been killed, including over 8,000 in areas controlled by Ukraine.
The actual number of casualties is likely ‘considerably higher’ and difficult to verify, as independent observers are blocked from accessing occupied areas, it added.
