Ukraine strikes Russian power and heat station in Moscow region

By Guy Faulconbridge and Lucy Papachristou

MOSCOW (Reuters) -Ukraine struck a heat and power station in the Moscow region on Sunday with drones, triggering a major fire and cutting off heating for thousands in one of Kyiv's biggest attacks to date on a power station deep inside Russia.

In the fourth year of the deadliest European conflict since World War Two, Russia has been pummelling Ukraine's electricity and heat infrastructure while Kyiv has up until now mostly focused on trying to knock out Russia's oil refineries, crude terminals and pipelines.

But early on Sunday, Ukrainian drones struck the Shatura Power Station, about 120 km (75 miles) east of the Kremlin, Moscow region governor Andrei Vorobyov said.

Video footage on Telegram showed balls of flames and black smoke rising into the night sky from the power station. Reuters was able to confirm the location, though not the date of the video.

"Some of the drones were destroyed by air-defence forces. Several fell on the territory of the station. A fire broke out at the facility," Vorobyov said.

Vorobyov said that backup power had been switched on and that mobile heating systems were being deployed to the area where the temperature was around freezing point.

"All efforts are being taken to promptly restore heat supply," Vorobyov said. The town of Shatura has a population of about 33,000.

One local resident said that there was no heating. Three transformers at the power station caught fire, the Kommersant newspaper cited the emergencies ministry as saying.

There was no immediate comment from Ukraine.

In recent weeks and months, there have been repeated power and heat outages in parts of Ukraine due to Russian attacks. Ukraine has tried to undermine Russia's war economy by targeting its oil revenues.

Ukraine has also hit some power and heating installations in Ukrainian regions controlled by Russian forces and in Russian regions neighbouring Ukraine, but has thus far not inflicted major damage on electricity and heat stations serving Moscow and the surrounding region, which has a population of more than 22 million.

Russia's defence ministry said on Sunday it had downed 75 Ukrainian drones, including 36 over the Black Sea and several over the Moscow region. Russia's Vnukovo airport halted flights on Sunday for about an hour before restoring them.

The Shatura power station, one of Russia's oldest, was founded under Vladimir Lenin after the Bolshevik revolution, and used to run on peat. It now uses mostly natural gas.

(Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge in Moscow, Lucy Papachristou in Tbilisi and Tiffany Le in Beijing; editing by Elaine Hardcastle)