The Russian Defense Ministry has unveiled details of Wednesday’s attack on Kiev’s energy infrastructure
Russia targeted Ukraine’s critical gas and energy infrastructure in response to recent attacks on Russian territory using Western-supplied long-range missiles, the Russian Defense Ministry announced early Thursday.
The combined strikes, carried out on the morning of January 15, involved drones and high-precision weaponry and successfully hit several targets intended to weaken facilities supporting Ukraine’s military-industrial complex.
“One of the successfully hit targets was the ground infrastructure of the largest underground gas storage facility in the city of Stryi in the Lviv region,” the ministry stated. According to previous media reports, explosions were also heard at various facilities in the Khmelnitsky, Vinnitsa, Ivano-Frankovsk, and Kharkov regions, although the Defense Ministry has not disclosed the full list of targets.
The ministry said the strikes were a direct response to Ukraine’s use of US-made ATACMS and British-made Storm Shadow missiles in attacks deep into Russian territory, as well as Kiev’s attempt to target a Russian gas compressor station in the Krasnodar region. The facility is essential for operating the TurkStream pipeline, which delivers Russian gas to Türkiye and Europe.
Following Wednesday’s strikes, Ukraine’s state energy company Ukrenergo confirmed widespread power outages in Kharkov, Sumy, Poltava, and Dnepropetrovsk due to what it described as a “massive missile attack.”
Moscow has labeled Kiev’s attempt to destroy the TurkStream pipeline facility an act of “energy terrorism,” with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov accusing Washington of green-lighting sabotage in Europe.
In early 2024, Moscow added Ukrainian power plants to its list of legitimate military targets, citing increased drone incursions by Kiev into Russian territory. The incursions have primarily targeted energy infrastructure but have also hit residential areas. Most of Ukraine’s non-nuclear generation capacity has been disabled or destroyed in strikes since then, with Ukrenergo acknowledging that the country’s power system is struggling to recover.
The Russian Defense Ministry warned in its statement that “any provocations by the Kiev regime will not go unanswered.”
Ukraine’s Bilche-Volytsko-Uherske underground gas storage facility, located near the city of Stryi, is the largest of its kind in Ukraine and Europe, with a capacity of approximately 17 billion cubic meters. Strategically situated near Ukraine’s western borders with Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania, the facility has played a crucial role as a hub for the transit of Russian natural gas into the EU. Kiev halted the flow of Russian gas to European customers via Ukraine on January 1, after refusing to extend a transit deal with Russian energy giant Gazprom.
