KYIV (NYT) — A Russian aerial assault on Ukrainian infrastructure this week — the largest since the start of the war — has left millions of people without power, compromised the connection of two nuclear plants to Ukraine's national grid and prompted the national energy utility to impose controlled but sweeping blackouts.


In the western Lviv region, to which millions of people have moved in an effort to escape the fighting, central heating was suspended and there was no hot water in the main city as of Wednesday morning. In Kryvyi Rih in central Ukraine, engineers at pumping stations are relying on large generators to keep the water flowing, and a rescue operation is underway, using counterweights and manual winches, to bring to the surface more than 100 miners trapped underground amid the loss of power.


"Burned residential buildings, destroyed power plants again, hundreds of cities were left without electricity, water and heat," President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said in a virtual address to a Group of 20 summit in Indonesia on Wednesday. "Internet traffic has fallen by two-thirds — imagine the scale."


At least 15 energy facilities were hit around the country, compounding the damage done by successive waves of recent Russian assaults that have left about 40 percent of Ukraine's critical energy infrastructure damaged or destroyed.


Volodymyr Kudrytskyi, the head of Ukrenergo, the national electric utility, described the situation as "serious — the most serious in history," although he said in a statement that utilities had been able to maintain services like water and heating by imposing controlled blackouts.


"Since the beginning of October, this is already the sixth huge attack on the country's energy infrastructure, this time the largest," he said. "About 100 missiles flew with the goal of plunging Ukraine into darkness."


As a result of the strikes on Tuesday, energy officials said Ukraine had lost five gigawatts of power — 80 percent of which had been provided by nuclear plants in the west of the country.


Russia did not hit nuclear power plants directly, according to Ukrainian officials, but damaged or destroyed high-voltage cables connecting the plants to the national grid. Russian rockets also hit the stations responsible for taking power from the nuclear plants and dispersing it to the wider grid, compelling plant operators to scale back how much energy the plants were generating.


Energy officials asked that the plants not be identified for security reasons but that said engineers were working to restore the damage. The critical cooling systems at all of the plants were working properly, officials said, and there was no immediate risk of a radiological accident as a result of the strikes.


Still, Russia's targeting of high-voltage lines running to nuclear power plants raises concerns, because a reliable connection to the grid is essential to the safe functioning of any nuclear plant. Before the war, Ukraine relied on nuclear power to generate more than half of its energy.

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