Smoke and fire erupt from a missile explosion on Ukraine's largest dam, the DniproHES, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine March 22, 2024, in this handout image.Russia unleashed a massive aerial attack on Friday in what Ukrainian officials said was the largest and most destructive assault on its energy infrastructure since the start of the war.
The strikes forced emergency shut downs of electricity in at least seven regions, including Odesa, Dnipro, Poltava, Zaporizhzhia and Kirovohrad, according to Ukraine’s state energy company. Officials in Ukraine’s second largest city, Kharkiv, said it was entirely without power following the attacks. "We are losing the station,” Ihor Syrota, head of Ukraine’s state hydro-power company, Ukrhydroenergo, told RFE/RL in a live interview, saying that two missiles had struck the power plant.
Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday said the attacks showed the cost of the delays in Western support.