On the ground: Russian strikes on Ukraine power grid largest in weeks

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00:00For more on the story, we can now cross to France 24's Gulliver.

00:03Craig, he joins us live from Kiev.

00:05Gulliver, what indication do we have at the moment

00:07at just how effective this Russian attack has been,

00:11how much damage has been done?

00:15Well, as usual, the authorities are quite tight-lipped

00:18about exactly what damage has been done and where.

00:21I'm at the northern edge of Kiev,

00:23and behind me is the road that goes to the dam at Vyshgorod.

00:27It's a hydroelectric power station.

00:29As you can perhaps see, the road is closed.

00:32It's clear that this hydroelectric power station

00:35was one of the targets.

00:36A video has been released of a missile

00:38falling into the Kiev Sea, as it's known,

00:41the reservoir that the dam holds in above the city.

00:45But it seems that wasn't the only missile

00:48and that there is some damage.

00:50That, of course, always leads to fears

00:52that Kiev could be flooded, that the dam could burst.

00:54That's actually highly unlikely.

00:56It's very, very hard to burst a strong dam like that

00:58by firing on it from a distance.

01:00But putting the hydroelectric power generation capacity

01:03completely out of action, that is absolutely possible.

01:06And that was probably the Russians' aim,

01:09because according to the Ukrainian authorities,

01:12this was an attack aimed principally

01:15at the country's electricity infrastructure.

01:17All over the country, different power stations,

01:19different parts of the electricity grid were hit.

01:22Also, though, notably in Lutsk,

01:25in the far northwest of Ukraine,

01:27residential apartment buildings were hit,

01:30perhaps by debris falling

01:32or perhaps by the projectile missing its target.

01:35One person is reported dead there.

01:37In Kiev, private homes were damaged,

01:39one of them completely reduced to rubble.

01:42Several people reported injured there,

01:44including a five-month-old baby.

01:46And many cities in Ukraine, including Lutsk, Zhytomyr

01:50and parts of Kiev are this morning completely,

01:53well, this afternoon now, sorry, without electricity.

01:56So, Golovor, there's been expectations of a major attack

02:00from Russia on Ukraine for weeks now,

02:01especially since Ukraine's incursion

02:03into Russia's Kursk region.

02:05What does it say that Russia is able to mount

02:07this massive missile attack

02:08on Ukraine's energy infrastructure,

02:10but seemingly unable to dislodge Ukrainian troops

02:13from its own territory?

02:16Well, they're two completely different things.

02:18The Russians have been building up missile capacity.

02:21They've got new drones,

02:22in addition to the Iranian Shahed ones,

02:24which allows them to fly the drones around for longer.

02:28I believe the alert is actually still in place

02:30for Kiev, the air alert,

02:32because drones are still flying around.

02:35And there's a limit to how much

02:36the Ukrainian air defenses can do

02:38to protect the electricity infrastructure.

02:42But it looks very, very bad for the coming winter,

02:44because already I was talking to DTEK,

02:46one of the main electricity companies,

02:48and they were saying that even in the best-case scenario

02:50where there would be no further strikes,

02:52this was before this morning's attack,

02:55they were looking to be providing people

02:57with electricity for fewer hours in the day

03:00than the hours in the day

03:01that they would not have electricity

03:03throughout this winter.

03:04Presumably now those already pessimistic expectations

03:07are going to be revised even further downwards.

03:10All right.

03:10Another rough winter perhaps in store for Ukraine

03:14once again as Russia targets energy infrastructure there.

03:16That's France 24.

03:17It's Gulliver Craig from Kiev.

03:18Thanks very much.

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