Belgorod loses power and water after Ukrainian strike on gas-turbine plant, one killed

Russia's border city of Belgorod lost electricity and water across several districts early on 3 July after a Ukrainian strike hit a city energy facility, in what Ukrainian military sources described as a missile strike on a substation at a combined heat and power plant. A woman was killed in her car and five vehicles were damaged, Belgorod officials said.

The strike landed a day after Russia's deadliest assault on Kyiv this year — a missile-and-drone barrage that killed at least 30 people and put the capital under a day of mourning on 3 July. It fits the blackout-for-blackout logic Ukraine has followed since autumn: for every strike on Ukraine's grid, one on Russia's. Belgorod has been among the most repeatedly hit, and Moscow, in turn, framed its own Kyiv attack as retaliation for Ukrainian strikes on Russian refineries.

What was hit

Open-source analysts identified the target as the Michurinskaya gas-turbine plant, with the strike falling on its 110-kilovolt station substation. The plant supplies power to Belenergomash-BZEM, a large industrial enterprise producing pipes and metal structures for Russian industry, the Ukrainian outlet RBC-Ukraine reported. Belgorod regional authorities confirmed an attack on the region and a fire at an infrastructure object, with emergency crews sent to the site.

A city in the dark, again

Power and water went down in southern and central parts of the city of more than 320,000, alongside problems with cellular service and internet, local channels and the mayor said. The city has been through this repeatedly: Ukrainian forces struck its power plants and substations through the autumn and winter, and in January the regional governor reported 600,000 residents temporarily left without electricity, heat, and water. EP has tracked the recurring hits on the city's grid.

The wider campaign

The Belgorod strike sits inside a broader Ukrainian push against Russian and occupied energy and fuel infrastructure. In the 48 hours before it, Ukrainian drones hit power substations across occupied Crimea and struck a refinery in Russia's Nizhny Novgorod Oblast. The campaign against Russian refineries has driven a domestic fuel crisis and forced Russia to import gasoline. Ukraine has cast the grid strikes as a proportional answer to Russia's years of attacks on Ukrainian energy — the same reciprocity Moscow invoked, in reverse, to explain the Kyiv barrage.