Half a million people have been left without power after a “significant” accident at an electricity substation in Odessa, southern Ukraine.
The Black Sea port and its surroundings were plunged into darkness following a large-scale network outage, Ukrainenetwork operator Ukrenergo reported.
He said the outage involved equipment “repeatedly repaired” after Russia’s attacks on the country’s energy grid and warned residents to prepare for long outages.
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“Unfortunately, the scale of the accident is quite large, and this time the power supply restrictions will be longer. It is not yet possible to determine a precise moment when (electricity) will be fully restored” , the company said.
Maksym Marchenko, a Ukrainian colonel, wrote on Telegram: “A serious accident occurred at one of the energy facilities of NPC Ukrenergo, which caused a fire.
“Because of this, the Odessa region and the city of Odessa were almost completely disconnected. To date, almost 500,000 subscribers have no electricity.”
Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said: “The situation is difficult, the scale of the accident is significant, it is impossible to quickly restore power supply, especially to critical infrastructure.”
He said the substation had already been damaged several times by Russian missile strikes.
Shmyhal said the energy minister and the national grid operator’s CEO were on their way to oversee repairs, as authorities worked to restore power to critical infrastructure and buildings. dwellings that need electricity to heat their homes.
The temperature in the southern city was 2C today and is expected to drop below freezing for much of next week.
DTEK Odesa Power Grids wrote on Facebook that it was the second “large-scale accident” to take place in the past 24 hours.
Mr Shmyhal said he had ordered Ukraine’s energy ministry to scramble all available high-power generators in its national inventory and deliver them to Odessa within a day.
He also ordered Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry to call on Turkey to send powerships – ships that carry power plants – to come to the city’s aid.
