The massive facility, which authorities have asked not to name for security reasons, has been reduced to a pile of twisted metal and broken pipes, its turbines buried in rubble, and the site taken completely offline.
Volodymyr Kovalenko was on duty in the control room, helping to keep the plant working, when the missiles struck at 3 a.m.
“It was a very powerful attack,” he said. “We had never experienced anything like it. We had had strikes before — part of the roof had collapsed, and it was pretty grim. But this time it was particularly severe.”
Kovalenko, who followed in his parents’ footsteps and has worked at the site for 25 years, said the damage was heartbreaking, though he was confident it could be repaired.
But the work is being hampered by air raids every 15 to 30 minutes — seven times during a four-hour visit. Each warning of drones and further missiles forced teams to stop work and take cover, though during the visit all were shot down or flew on toward other targets.
If there was not enough time to reach the plant’s main shelter, workers hid in the foundations of its towering chimneys.
“It is very difficult,” said Vadym Bobyr, who is leading the recovery effort. “You have mentally prepared yourself to do a particular job, and then… the air raid siren goes off, and you have to get out as quickly as possible.”
The 39-year-old, who has worked there half his life, was dwarfed by the mangled ruins and daunted by the challenge of rebuilding the plant.
“It is emotionally difficult,” he said. “We have already repaired all this, got it running again, and now it has happened all over again. It hurts, but we keep working and getting things done.”
As we spoke, another alert sounded — an incoming Banderol cruise missile.
The workers moved through the maze of passages and pipework, but there was not enough time to reach a shelter; one of the plant’s thickest walls would have to serve as cover. The missile was eventually intercepted about 5 km (3 miles) away.
Energy workers face enormous risk. Since August, there have been almost daily attacks on power facilities, claiming several lives every week, and the danger is getting worse.
On the edge of the site, with the latest threat over, a team returned to reinstating the power lines feeding the national grid. But they will not be carrying electricity from the shattered plant before the end of winter at the earliest, at least.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukraine still has enough generating capacity to meet electricity demand — the problem is getting it to homes and businesses when so many power lines and substations have been hit. Russia is using “waiter drones” that cling to pylons and cables and go undetected until Russia decides to detonate them.
Maxim Timchenko, chief executive of DTEK, Ukraine’s largest private energy company, said Russia was already putting the degraded electricity grid under even greater pressure than last year and that overstretched air defences were unable to protect all of Ukraine’s critical infrastructure.
“What is different is the scale of the attacks and the different types of weapons used in them,” Timchenko said. “This is the difference — they have doubled in power and in scale.”
He said rebuilding the damaged power station would take at least until next summer, because workers under sustained attack were limited to only one or two productive hours per day.
“We are fighting for the survival of not only the whole country but ordinary people, especially during winter,” Timchenko said.
