Russia just knocked out Ukraine's power grid and hit a nuclear plant's substation
Russia just hit Ukraine's power grid harder than any other time this year.
Three major power plants are offline. A substation tied to a nuclear plant got hit too.
So here's what happened overnight. Russia fired 289 attack drones. 17 ballistic missiles. 59 cruise missiles. All aimed at energy sites, across ten regions of Ukraine — Vinnytsia, Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhzhia, Zhytomyr, Rivne, Odesa, Chernihiv, Chernivtsi, Khmelnytskyi and Kharkiv. That's Ukraine's Energy Ministry confirming the scale.
DTEK runs Ukraine's largest private energy company. It says three of its five working thermal power plants have stopped generating power completely.
DTEK says the damage is extensive and the stations have stopped producing electricity.
DTEK won't say where those three plants are. Security reasons.
So where's the damage worst? Vinnytsia, Zhytomyr and Kharkiv regions, according to the Energy Ministry. More than 180,000 people lost power in Zhytomyr region alone.
And now there are emergency power cuts. Kyiv and six regions — Kyiv, Poltava, Sumy, Chernihiv, Cherkasy and Kharkiv. Equipment is damaged. Voltage is dropping across the high-voltage network.
Some people have gone more than 12 hours without power. Ukrainska Pravda says these are the biggest outages of the whole autumn so far.
But here's the part that goes beyond Ukraine.
Russia sent three drones at a substation. That substation keeps the Khmelnytskyi Nuclear Power Plant running safely.
Denys Shmyhal is Ukraine's Energy Minister and First Deputy Prime Minister. He says this kind of strike threatens nuclear safety right across Europe, not just Ukraine.
He's calling it a serious escalation. Ukraine has told the International Atomic Energy Agency. Shmyhal briefed ambassadors from the G7, the EU and the Nordic-Baltic Eight straight after.
So that's Ukraine's own energy minister saying this strike carries a nuclear risk that doesn't stop at the border.
What we don't know: the plant's actual condition. Nobody has said whether the reactor's power supply was damaged, or whether the strike just came close.
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