Europe | Racing against time

Half Ukraine’s power is knocked out; winter is coming

Ingenuity can get you only so far

A worker walks inside DTEK's power plant which was destroyed by a Russian missile attack in Ukraine
Photograph: AP
|KYIV

On a tour of a destroyed power plant—unidentified for security reasons—the monumental damage wrought by Russia’s spring campaign against Ukraine’s electricity-generation infrastructure is clear. The vast Soviet-era coal-fired power station is gutted: walls charred by a fire that that burnt for over 24 hours, windows blown out, roof collapsed, machinery wrecked, pipes and ducts broken; everywhere a mess of rubble, twisted metal support struts, flayed steel cables, wire.

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