Massive Attack Destroys One of Ukraine’s Largest Power Plants

 A rescuer works at the site of a Russian military strike, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv region, Ukraine April 11, 2024. (Press service of the State Emergency Service of Ukraine in Kyiv region/Handout via Reuters)
A rescuer works at the site of a Russian military strike, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv region, Ukraine April 11, 2024. (Press service of the State Emergency Service of Ukraine in Kyiv region/Handout via Reuters)
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Massive Attack Destroys One of Ukraine’s Largest Power Plants

 A rescuer works at the site of a Russian military strike, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv region, Ukraine April 11, 2024. (Press service of the State Emergency Service of Ukraine in Kyiv region/Handout via Reuters)
A rescuer works at the site of a Russian military strike, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv region, Ukraine April 11, 2024. (Press service of the State Emergency Service of Ukraine in Kyiv region/Handout via Reuters)

A massive missile and drone attack destroyed one of Ukraine's largest power plants and damaged others, officials said Thursday, part of a renewed Russian campaign targeting energy infrastructure.

The Trypilska plant, which was the biggest energy supplier for the Kyiv, Cherkasy and Zhytomyr regions, was struck numerous times, destroying the transformer, turbines and generators and leaving the plant ablaze. As the first drone approached, workers hid in a shelter, saving their lives, said Andrii Gota, chairman of the supervisory board of the state company that runs the plant, Centrenergo.

They watched the plant burn, surrounded by dense smoke and engulfed in flames. “It’s terrifying,” said Gota. Hours later, rescuers were still dismantling the rubble.

Speaking in Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin cast the attacks on Ukrainian energy facilities as a response to Ukrainian strikes that targeted Russian oil refineries.

The Trypilska plant supplied electricity to 3 million customers — but none lost power because the grid was able to compensate since demands are low at this time of year. Still, the consequences of the strikes could be felt in the coming months, as air conditioning use ramps up with summer.

At least 10 other strikes overnight damaged energy infrastructure in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city. Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said more than 200,000 people in the region, which has been struck repeatedly, were without power.

Ukraine's largest private energy operator, DTEK, described the slew of strikes as one of the most powerful attacks this year, while Energy Minister Herman Halushchenko told reporters it was a “large scale, enormous, missile attack that affected our energy sector very badly.”

Russia has recently renewed strikes on Ukrainian energy facilities, and attacks last month blacked out large parts of the country — a level of darkness not seen since the first days of the full-scale invasion in 2022.

The volume and accuracy of the attacks have alarmed the country’s defenders and left officials scrambling for better ways to protect energy assets. The strikes have also tested Ukraine’s ability to make quick repairs.

Ukraine’s leaders have pleaded for more air defense systems to ward off such attacks, but those supplies have been slow in coming.

“Today’s situation demonstrates that there’s nothing left to shoot down” the missiles, Gota said.



Iran Pauses Process to Implement Stricter Headscarf Law for Women, Official Says

FILE - Iranian women, some without wearing their mandatory headscarves, walk in downtown Tehran, Iran, Saturday, Sept. 9, 2023. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi, File)
FILE - Iranian women, some without wearing their mandatory headscarves, walk in downtown Tehran, Iran, Saturday, Sept. 9, 2023. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi, File)
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Iran Pauses Process to Implement Stricter Headscarf Law for Women, Official Says

FILE - Iranian women, some without wearing their mandatory headscarves, walk in downtown Tehran, Iran, Saturday, Sept. 9, 2023. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi, File)
FILE - Iranian women, some without wearing their mandatory headscarves, walk in downtown Tehran, Iran, Saturday, Sept. 9, 2023. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi, File)

Iran has paused the process of implementing a new, stricter law on women’s mandatory headscarf, or hijab, an official said.

The controversial law, which was approved by the parliament in September 2023, will not be sent to the government as planned this week, according to one of the country's vice presidents. The development effectively means that Iran has halted enacting the legislation.

The law levies harsher punishments for women who refuse to wear the hijab and for businesses that serve them, penalties previously rejected by Iran’s reformist President Masoud Pezeshkian as he tries to restart talks with the West over sanctions imposed on Iran over its nuclear program.

“According to the discussions held, it was decided that this law will not be referred to the government by the parliament for now,” Shahram Dabiri, the vice president in charge of parliamentary affairs, was quoted as saying in an interview Monday with the pro-reform Ham Mihan daily.

The decision to halt the legislation — at least temporarily — was reached by top executive, legislative and judiciary bodies, The Associated Press quoted Dabiri as saying. At the moment, it is “not feasible to implement this bill,” he added, without elaborating.

Had the bill passed to the government, Iran's president would have had little room to maneuver. By law, he’s required to endorse the bill within five days, after which it would have taken effect in 15 days. The president has no authority to veto it.

Pezeshkian could try to convince Iran’s 85-year-old Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who has final say on all matters of state, to halt the bill.

If the bill had been enacted, Pezeshkian could also refuse to act on it or urge police not to enforce it, setting up a potential constitutional crisis that hard-liners could try to exploit to weaken him.

The president had earlier described the law as having “many questions and ambiguities.”