The bomb alert had just been issued on the morning of Monday, March 25, when several explosions rocked the Ukrainian capital. As Kyiv's inhabitants rushed into shelters, two Russian hypersonic 3M22 Zircon missiles were intercepted by air defenses. Their debris fell on several neighborhoods, including the central district of Pechersky, destroying a building and its surroundings. After this third attack on the city in less than a week, the Ukrainian authorities reiterated their request for new deliveries of defense systems. "I stressed the importance of delivering more Patriot and other air defense systems capable of intercepting ballistic missiles to Ukraine," wrote Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba on X.
The urgency of this appeal is heightened by the fact that Ukraine has been subjected to repeated bombardments of its energy infrastructure for several days. This latest escalation, which has already resulted in dozens of deaths and injuries, began with a widespread series of airstrikes across the country at dawn on Friday, March 22. More than 60 kamikaze drones and almost 90 missiles of various types were launched in what the head of the state-owned electricity company Ukrenergo, Volodymyr Kudrytskyi, described as Russia's biggest attack on critical facilities since the start of the invasion.
Dozens of thermal power plants and electrical substations were hit. Ukraine's largest hydroelectric plant, DniproHES, located on the Dnipro River in the Zaporizhzhia region, was also hit. While some of the targeted infrastructures were spared thanks to protective structures built in the fall of 2023, eight regions experienced power cuts, depriving hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians of electricity for several hours.
Since then, the relentless bombing of towns has persisted, and the country's officials are only now starting to understand the extent of the damage. On Sunday, March 24, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that Russia had fired some 190 missiles, 140 kamikaze drones and 700 guided aerial bombs at Ukraine in the space of a week.
On the same day, Sergey Kovalenko, CEO of Yasno, a distribution network company of Ukrainian electricity supplier DTEK, announced that the group had "lost 50% of its production capacity." Speaking on Ukrainian television on Sunday, Kovalenko also indicated that repairing the damages could take several months and expressed concern about possible power shortages during the upcoming summer.
As for the DniproHES hydroelectric power station, which Kyiv said was hit eight times, the CEO of state energy company Ukrhydroenergo, Ihor Syrota, said on Monday that his teams still needed time to assess the damage, while mentioning that repairs could take "years." One of the two stations is in "critical condition." "This is a major loss for the Ukrainian energy system," said Syrota. While Ukrainians still remember the explosion of the Kakhovka dam, which caused flooding and an environmental disaster in June 2023 on the same river, the director assured that there was no risk of the DniproHES dam bursting.
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