World News
Kherson is told to leave after its heat and power plant is hit again
By Staff Writer | 29 August 2026
Four guided aerial bombs destroyed equipment at the combined heat and power plant. The regional administration says the city can no longer count on it working this winter and is asking families to go.
The head of the Kherson Regional Military Administration asked residents of the city on Thursday to leave for safer parts of the country if they had anywhere to go, singling out families with children and elderly people. The request followed an overnight attack on the Kherson combined heat and power plant, which the state energy company said was struck by four guided aerial bombs that destroyed equipment.
The security situation in Kherson is extremely difficult. The enemy is intensifying attacks on the region's critical infrastructure every day
Oleksandr Prokudin, head of the Kherson Regional Military Administration
It was not the first strike on the plant, he said, but this time the facility suffered very serious damage. The consequence he set out is the one that matters to anyone who has to plan around it.
we can no longer count on the CHP plant or other critical infrastructure facilities operating as usual this winter
Oleksandr Prokudin, head of the Kherson Regional Military Administration
Kherson may be without electricity and heating not for hours or days but for an extended period, he said, and preparation for that has to start now rather than when it happens. Work on alternative heat and power supply is under way with the city authorities, the utility services, energy workers and the government. Those who decide to leave are being offered help with transport, accommodation and social support, through two regional numbers and a national evacuation line.
The weapons the defence does not reach
He gave figures for the campaign against the region. Since 1 July, 170 guided aerial bombs have been dropped on Kherson region, more in under two months than in the whole of the first half of this year. More than 1,700 attack drones have been launched over the past two months, increasingly including jet powered types aimed at critical infrastructure. Small first person view drone attacks reached 6,500 in a single week. No region of the country, he said, currently has the means to bring down either those drones or guided aerial bombs.
A combined heat and power plant is not a substitutable asset. It carries the district heating network as well as the grid, its main items have long lead times, and a city that loses one in late August has about ten weeks to arrange something else before it is needed. That is the whole of the reason the administration is asking people to move rather than waiting to see.
A drone attack early on Friday killed a 61 year old man in the Korabelnyi district of the city, who was taken to hospital with a penetrating chest wound. Three others were wounded and taken to hospital in the Dniprovsky district. Russian forces hold the opposite bank of the Dnipro, which puts the city within reach of ordinary shelling as well as of drones and glide bombs. Kherson had about 280,000 inhabitants before February 2022 and was occupied from March to November of that year.
A pattern rather than an incident
The attacks on energy assets are not confined to the south. Kyiv spent nearly fifteen hours under air raid alert on Thursday. Ukraine's president said earlier this month that the country had virtually no intact thermal power plants left. Ukrainian stocks of interceptor missiles have begun to run down, and deliveries of the American systems the country relies on for high altitude defence have fallen sharply as United States stockpiles were drawn down by the war in the Middle East.
Last winter the same target set was worked over and millions of people lost heat and light. The difference this year is that a regional administration has said in advance that the plant will not be there, and has started looking for something to put in its place.