Star Metro - 'Everything is destroyed': Ukrainian power plant in ruins after Russian strike

Hours later, two missiles slammed into the plant, finishing off the destruction of a unit already ravaged in an earlier bombardment.

It is just one of the sites decimated by the most intense wave of Russian attacks on Ukraine's energy grid of the four-year war.

Kyiv and its allies accuse Moscow of trying to plunge Ukraine into a humanitarian crisis, cutting off electricity, heating and water to civilians with temperatures touching multi-year lows of minus 20C in Kyiv.

Days after the recent strike, in a visit to the undisclosed facility by AFP, the air still smelled burnt.

A frozen crow was encased in the snow. Stray dogs roamed the wreckage, weaving between huge charred twisted pipes and silent idle turbines.

The site -- now resembling a post-industrial wasteland -- has been wiped out by multiple Russian strikes.

It is unclear when, or if, production can be restored there.

"I would like to say months, but it will probably take years," said Oleksandr, 53, head of the production management department.

AFP reporters visited the plant, run by private operator DTEK, as part of rare press access to a site Ukraine considers critical infrastructure. The location and full names of most employees can not be revealed.

- 'Crying' -

"I've worked at this plant for 27 years, I just feel like crying," said Volodymyr, a 53-year-old shift supervisor.

His team was working the night of the most recent strikes.

"Hundreds of workers and engineers are here around the clock, day and night, to repair as much as possible," said DTEK's communications manager Oleksandr Kutereshchyn.

AFP saw excavators scooping debris, and dozens of first responders and employees clearing rubble.

Since Russia invaded in 2022, Ukraine's energy infrastructure has been attacked more than 220 times, according to Kyiv.

The International Criminal Court in 2024 issued arrest warrants for top Russian military figures over the missile attacks on power plants, which the court's prosecutors said constituted a war crime.

Ukrainians have termed their own word for the barrage -- "Kholodomor", a reference to the Holodomor, the 1930s famine orchestrated by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin that Kyiv considers a genocide.

Literally, it translates as "death by cold".

- 'Our life' -

The attacks do more than just knock out the power -- they also sap the morale, particularly of the communities of workers and families that have been built around the plants.

When Russia last struck, "the guys came right away to help -- even those who were off or on vacation," Volodymyr told AFP.

"This is our life, you understand?"

Ania, 22, who lives in the nearby town said her mother has worked for 30 years as an administrator with DTEK.

"All these people have spent half their lives working there. And now everything is destroyed," she told AFP.

Restaurant manager Veronika, 24, is getting tired of the electricity only turning on for 60-minute stints every six hours.

Her aunt works at the the plant, which is located behind a forest that backs on to her house."Of course it's frightening," when Russia attacks, she said.

But she is determined.

"You end up getting used to it. The most important thing is that people, children, don't suffer. Metal can be rebuilt. Even if some say everything is ruined, that's not true."

She added: "The plant's chimneys are still standing, and so are we."

X.Boucher--SMC