Russia launches ‘largest mass attack’ on gas network, state operator says

Russia overnight carried out its largest attack on Ukraine‘s gas network since the start of Moscow‘s full-scale invasion in 2022, Kyiv‘s state-owned gas operator said Friday.

The waves of attacks on Ukraine‘s power grid plunged millions into darkness and cut off heating supplies as temperatures plunged below freezing.

“The enemy carried out the largest mass attack on gas production infrastructure since the beginning of the war,” Ukraine’s state-run gas company Naftogaz said in a statement.

“As a result of this attack, a significant portion of our facilities have been damaged. Some of the damage is critical,” said Naftogaz chairman Sergiy Koretsky.

Around 35 missiles and 60 drones were fired at its facilities in the northeastern Kharkiv region and central Poltava region, it added.

“Some were successfully shot down. Unfortunately, not all,” it said.

Read moreRussian strikes cut power to Zaporizhzhia and Chernobyl nuclear plants

There were power cuts in several regions, Ukraine’s energy ministry said, but did not provide further details.

Russia’s military said it had attacked Ukraine’s “military-industrial” complex in combined missile and drone strikes.

Massive power outages in Ukraine are less common now than during the 2022-2023 winter, when Russian attacks triggered widespread electricity cuts across the country.

The International Criminal Court in 2024 issued arrest warrants for Russia’s ex-defence minister and its top army commander over the strikes on Ukraine’s energy grid, which it said constituted a war crime.

Ukraine has also launched retaliatory long-range drone strikes on Russia’s oil refineries, seeking to cut off vital energy revenues that it says fund Moscow’s army.

A source in Ukraine’s SBU security service told AFP on Friday that Kyiv had struck a refinery some 1,400 kilometres from the front in Russia‘s Orenburg region.

Unverified social media videos showed a drone crashing into what appeared to be a refinery, sending a plume of grey smoke into the sky.

The local Russian governor of the region said on social media a drone had hit an industrial facility, without elaborating.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)