Russia carried out its most massive attack to date on Ukraine’s gas production facilities overnight on Oct. 3, hitting sites in Kharkiv and Poltava regions and causing widespread damage, officials said Friday.
Naftogaz Group head Serhiy Koretskyi said the assault was a “combined strike” involving 35 missiles, including a significant number of ballistic missiles, and 60 drones. Ukrainian air defenses intercepted some, but not all.
“This is the most massive attack on our gas production infrastructure since the start of the full-scale war,” Koretskyi wrote on Facebook. “It was targeted terror against civilian facilities that ensure gas extraction and processing needed for people’s daily lives.”
Koretskyi reported that a “significant part” of the facilities was damaged, with some sites sustaining critical destruction. Emergency crews, Naftogaz specialists, and Ukraine’s State Emergency Service were working on-site to mitigate the aftermath.
DTEK Naftogaz confirmed that several of its production facilities in the Poltava region were forced to halt operations. The State Emergency Service said strikes also damaged industrial enterprises and private homes. In several communities, windows were blown out, roofs were torn off, and power lines were hit.
Debris from a follow-up strike even struck a fire truck, though no emergency personnel were injured. More than 40 vehicles and over 140 firefighters were deployed to respond to the aftermath.
In Dnipro, drones sparked overnight fires in residential areas, damaging several homes but causing no casualties, regional governor Serhii Lysak said. Ukrainian air defenses shot down 13 drones over the Dnipropetrovsk region, he added. Damage was also reported in the Nikopol district.
Air defenses were active over Kyiv on Friday morning, and the military later warned of cruise missiles heading toward Poltava, Kremenchuk and other central and western cities.
Koretskyi accused Russia of attempting to undermine Ukraine’s ability to heat homes this winter. “There is no military sense in this. It is yet another manifestation of Russian meanness, aimed solely at disrupting the heating season,” he said.
Ukraine’s Air Force had not yet confirmed the full scale of the strike at the time of publication. However, multiple monitoring channels on Telegram reported that Russia may have launched nearly 400 drones along with 35 missiles, including Iskander-M, KN-23, and Kh-59/69 types.
Koretskyi said Ukraine is working with international partners to ensure an “adequate and timely” response to the strike. “Terror must never achieve its goal anywhere,” he added.
The barrage followed earlier strikes this week that targeted Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. On Wednesday, a Russian drone attack on an electrical substation in Slavutych cut power to the nearby city and briefly disrupted electricity at the Chornobyl nuclear power plant. Power was later restored, and radiation levels remained safe, officials said.
The attack left more than 300,000 people in Chernihiv and surrounding areas without electricity, forcing rolling blackouts and increased police patrols in darkened neighborhoods.
Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said the attacks showed Moscow’s determination to cripple civilian infrastructure.
“Russia is trying to destroy our infrastructure every day – railways, roads, energy,” he wrote, urging tighter sanctions and efforts to block the supply of foreign-made components used in Russian weapons.