Russia has carried out a massive airstrike on power supplies in the northeastern Sumy region. This leaves at least 100,000 people without electricity. Some also without water.

As far as we know, there were no casualties in last night’s shelling. The Ukrainian military says it shot down 24 of the 32 Russian drones.

However, the power plant supplying electricity to the capital of the province of the same name and areas in the neighboring Kharkiv region was damaged. Cables supplying power to pumps were also damaged. This cut off water supplies to the city of Sumy. The national grid operator Ukrenergo says restoration work is underway.

Over the past three months, Russia has been regularly attacking Ukrainian energy supplies again, just as it did in October and November 2022. The military is mainly hitting areas with less powerful air defenses. Targets around the capital, Kyiv, are harder to hit. Western-supplied air defense systems are installed there.

“The same number of drones and missiles that Russia used to attack power supplies in 2022 are now being targeted at five to six power plants in one region,” a Ukrenergo spokesman said this spring. As a result, power plants are sometimes so badly damaged that they can no longer be repaired.

As a result, Ukraine lost a third of its generating capacity. For comparison: this is the amount of electricity consumed by the Netherlands during peak hours.

As a result, Ukraine imports record amounts of energy from abroad. To save energy, electricity is cut off at regular intervals for a few hours a day.

In this video, Ukrainians tell what life with constant power outages is doing to them. “You get used to living in the dark.”