Ukraine's race to rebuild power plants under Russian bombardment
Valeria was about to take a bite of pizza when the Iskander landed nearby.
The blast from the Russian missile shattered all the windows in the Mykolaiv CHP (combined heat and power) plant in southern Ukraine, igniting a gas fire and propelling shrapnel through the canteen.
'I had imagined what I might do when a missile or a Shahed [drone] comes, like if it really happens to me, and I had told myself I should be really calm at that moment,' says the 27-year-old.
She and her twin sister Alyona led a hyperventilating colleague out of the plant's office to her car. The trio were still driving away when the second Iskander hit, devastating the plant's boiler-room.
After that Oct 10 strike, the plant was targeted again, in January, February and May, each time with Shahed drones.
On Thursday night, Russia renewed its campaign against Ukraine's national energy infrastructure, breaking a loosely followed ceasefire Vladimir Putin agreed with Donald Trump in a phone call on March 18.
Power facilities were struck in the western city of Ternopil and targeted in other areas, days after Putin warned he would avenge Ukraine's elaborate 'Spiderweb' attack on Russia's bomber fleet.
'The scumbags haven't hit the energy sector en masse for five months,' wrote Myroshnykov, a Ukrainian military blogger. 'Ballistics on transformers – only the scumbags could do that.'
On Friday night, Moscow struck the northeastern city of Kharkiv with what the mayor described as the 'most powerful attack' since the start of the war, involving more than 50 Iranian-made drones, one rocket and four guided bombs.
At least three people were killed and 22 wounded in the devastating strikes. Harrowing scenes saw bloodied residents being carried out on stretchers from their homes by rescue workers wearing gas masks.
Respite is direly needed. Ukraine faces shortfalls in both electricity and natural gas production after the wave of Russian attacks – and every hour without further explosions allows for the progress of repairs.
Few appreciate the challenges like Dmytro Myroshnychenko, the chairman of Mykolaiv CHP plant. On a tour of the facility, he grimly points out the legacy of Russia's bombardment: the boiler-room is a tangle of charred iron and splintered rebar; shrapnel perforates an oil tank; flaps of corrugated roof panelling limp over the walls of the destroyed turbine control centre.
In full health, the Mykolaiv CHP heats 160,000 homes and provides 26MW of electricity to the national grid. The latter was ended by a February drone strike. That the plant managed to deliver heat over winter is testament to the grit of its staff.
After the first Iskander strike in October, Mr Myroschnychenko ran through the facility to check if anyone was injured. 'My first thought was, everyone is lying on the floor,' he says. Luckily, everyone survived.
The next day, repairs began. Russia's attack hit two weeks before the start of Mykolaiv's heating season, when residents can turn on their radiators as temperatures sink below freezing. Staff were nervous coming to work but 'everyone understood the importance, as if we didn't rebuild the city would be left without heat'.
Only interrupted by air raid alerts, workers frantically shifted pipelines from the two ruined boilers to a 1930s predecessor.
When he pushed the button to turn on the heat again, Mr Myroschnychenko felt little relief. 'I knew more attacks would be coming,' he says, 'so we started preparing for them.'
The £29.5million needed to build two new boilers is prohibitive; instead, the plant is focused on keeping its elderly system running. Four small metal air raid shelters have been placed on the plant floor, in addition to three underground bunkers.
Gennady, a 47-year-old machinist, escaped the boiler room by touch in one strike, unable to see through the clouds of dust. Now, when sirens warn of an impending strike, he often has to climb up and down several ladders: unlike the destroyed computerised systems, the surviving parts have to be operated by hand.
He jokes there is one advantage: 'It is difficult to break them so easily, as there are no electronics.' But they are harder to shut down in an emergency.
One new metal air raid shelter stands a few feet from the boiler. As Gennady opens the door, a worker caught in a lunchtime nap guiltily slips out.
The most serious challenge facing Ukraine ahead of the next heating season is a shortage of gas, with underground storage badly hit by the Russian strikes: Mykolaiv CHP lost large quantities when the Iskander destroyed a pipeline.
'We need to find $2.5 billion and purchase gas, putting aside the risk of further strikes. The task is quite clear, but extremely difficult,' Oleksandr Kharchenko, the director of Ukraine's energy research centre, told RBC-Ukraine, a local news outlet, this month.
Last winter, Ukraine avoided a crisis. Record high temperatures and low industrial use spared residents from major power cuts. Experts are calling for small boilers, firewood and coal to be delivered to the worst-hit cities – Mykolaiv, Odesa, Dnipro and Kryvyi Rih – before winter.
Should there be long-lasting blackouts, further waves of refugees will head west. Others will freeze to death.
In Mykolaiv CHP, the workers plough on with gallows humour. The plant knows war: it was destroyed by the Nazis when they were forced out of Mykolaiv by the Red Army in 1943.
A portrait of Lenin has been left above the doorway in one workshop, with the name 'Morozov' scrawled underneath; a decades-old reference to a lookalike employee.
The shipyard next door built Russia's only aircraft carrier, the Admiral Kuznetzov, before this invasion began.
All the plant's staff are protected from conscription. But it needs another 40 people to get up to speed, admits Mr Myroshnychenko.
At work, Valeria and her friends no longer eat pizza. The next time they sat down to one after the October strike, an air raid sounded immediately. 'It's become a joke,' she says – and another reason to loathe the Russians.
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