KYIV, Ukraine (AFP) — A Ukrainian power plant was struck in an overnight Russian attack, the plant’s operator said Thursday, in the latest missile and drone barrage targeting Ukrainian energy facilities.

The targeted Russian strikes over recent months have crippled Ukrainian electricity generation and have forced officials to introduce rolling blackouts and to import supplies from abroad.

“Another difficult night for the Ukrainian energy industry. The Russians attacked one of DTEK’s thermal power plants,” the company said in a statement, adding that an attack caused “serious damage” and wounded three employees.

It said this was the seventh “mass” attack on Ukrainian power plants over the last three months.

Ukraine’s national grid operator Ukrenergo said early Thursday that there had been a “massive strike on objects of civil energy infrastructure” the night before.

“Equipment at facilities in Vinnytsia, Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, Kyiv regions got damaged,” it added, though the extent was still “being clarified.”

President Volodymyr Zelensky has said that the attacks have halved generator capacity in the war-battered country compared to one year ago and urged allies to send more air defense systems to protect vital infrastructure.

Ukraine’s air force said that Russia had launched nine missiles and 27 Iranian-designed attack drones, and that air defense systems had downed all the projectiles except four missiles.

“Critical infrastructure objects were attacked. The main direction of the attack was the east of Ukraine, in particular Dnipropetrovsk region,” the air force said, one of the regions in which DTEK operates.

It said air defense systems were also activated in the regions of Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk, Kherson, Kharkiv and Kyiv, among others.

LNG sanction

Meanwhile, European Union states on Thursday signed off on a fresh package of sanctions against Russia targeting its lucrative liquefied natural gas (LNG) sector for the first time, officials said.

The new measures — which should be formally adopted on Monday — are aimed at further choking off Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war effort against Ukraine.

“This hard-hitting package will further deny Russia access to key technologies,” EU chief Ursula von der Leyen wrote on X.

“It will strip Russia of further energy revenues and tackle Putin’s shadow fleet and shadow banking network abroad.”

Diplomats said the latest sanctions — the 14th round imposed on Moscow by the EU since the 2022 invasion — includes a ban on the transshipment of Russian LNG via Europe.

They do not include a prohibition on the purchase of Russian LNG by EU countries.

European ports matter for Russia since the continent offers a key route for LNG exports from frozen Arctic ports to Asian markets in winter months.

Ports in Belgium, France, The Netherlands and Spain are the main points for LNG deliveries from Russia’s Siberian Yamal Peninsula.

The Belgian port of Zeebrugge and the French port of Montoir are especially important hubs for re-exports to countries such as China, Taiwan or Turkey.

The EU is in addition hitting Moscow’s SPFS bank messaging system, used by Russia to try to ease the impact of being cut off by the West from the global SWIFT financial transfer system.

Agreement on the latest package of sanctions was held up by Germany as it pushed to water down obligations on EU firms to prevent the re-export of their sanctioned products to Russia via third countries.