Russia strikes power plant, kills four in Ukraine barrage

• A massive Russian barrage of 25 missiles and nearly 300 drones on Tuesday killed four people and struck a DTEK power plant, forcing emergency blackouts for hundreds of thousands of households near Kyiv and Kharkiv amid freezing temperatures.
• Two Greek-owned oil tankers, the Matilda and Delta Harmony, were hit by unidentified drones in the Black Sea while en route to a Russian port; the incident follows a pattern of Ukrainian strikes aimed at draining Moscow's energy revenues, despite diplomatic tension with Kazakhstan over its use of the targeted terminal.

Russia pummelled a power plant early Tuesday as it kept up pressure on Ukraine's battered energy system, while unidentified drones hit two oil tankers in the Black Sea.

Four people were killed in Ukraine as Russia fired more than two dozen missiles and hundreds of drones overnight. Moscow has hit Ukraine with daily drone and missile barrages in recent months, targeting energy infrastructure and cutting power and heating in the frigid depths of winter.

Meanwhile, two Greek-owned oil tankers were hit in the Black Sea on Tuesday, one of which was scheduled to load Kazakh oil on Russia's coast, officials said.

The two tankers, the Maltese-flagged "Matilda" and Liberian-flagged "Delta Harmony", did not sustain major damage, an official from Greece's maritime ministry told AFP.

The Matilda was headed to load Kazakh oil at the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) terminal near Russia's Black Sea port of Novorossiysk when it was attacked, Kazakh state energy firm Kazmunaygas said.

"There were no injuries among the crew. According to preliminary assessments, the vessel remains seaworthy, and there are no signs of serious structural damage," it added. The Delta Harmony's oil tanks were empty at the time of the attack, the Kazakh energy ministry said.

Air defence call

The Russian attacks earlier Tuesday that killed four people targeted the eastern Kharkiv region, where an AFP reporter saw firefighters battling a fire at a postal hub and rescue workers helping survivors by lamp light in freezing temperatures.

Andriy Pidnebesny, a manager at the postal facility, said he was knocked down by the blast wave and tried -- but failed -- to free several colleagues still alive under the rubble.

President Volodymyr Zelensky said "several hundred thousand" households near Kyiv were without power after the strikes, and again called on allies to bolster his country's air defence systems.

"The world can respond to this Russian terror with new assistance packages for Ukraine," Zelensky wrote on social media.

"Russia must come to learn that cold will not help it win the war," he added.

Authorities in Kyiv and the surrounding region rolled out emergency power cuts in the hours after the attack, saying freezing temperatures were complicating their work.

AFP journalists in Kyiv saw a darkened grocery store that was running with just one or two cash registers from a rumbling generator.

DTEK, Ukraine's largest energy provider, said Russian forces had struck one of its power plants, saying it was the eighth such attack since October.

The operator did not reveal which of its plants was struck, but said Russia had attacked its power plants more than 220 times since 2022.

Daily attacks

The Ukrainian air force said that Tuesday's bombardment included 25 missiles and 293 drones.

The Kharkiv governor gave the death toll and added that six people were wounded in the overnight hit outside the region's main city, also called Kharkiv.

Within Ukraine's second city, Kharkiv Mayor Igor Terekhov said a Russian long-range drone struck a medical facility for children, causing a fire. No casualties were reported.

The overnight strikes hit other regions as well, including the southern city of Odesa.

Residential buildings, a hospital and a kindergarten were damaged, with at least five people wounded in two waves of attacks, regional governor Sergiy Lysak said.

Ukraine has stepped up long-range drone strikes on Russian military and energy sites in response.

Kyiv said Tuesday its forces had struck a drone manufacturing plant in the western Rostov region and the governor reported a local state of emergency there after two "enterprises" were hit.

While Ukraine did not take responsibility for the attacks on the two tankers in the Black Sea, it has targeted the CPC terminal multiple times throughout the nearly four-year war, including a naval drone strike last November that damaged one of its three mooring points.

The Ukrainian military says the strikes help drain the energy revenues Moscow uses to fund the war and are a justified response to Russia's missile and drone attacks.

But the attacks have drawn frustration from Kazakhstan, which transports around 80 percent of its oil through the CPC terminal.