Missile strike destroys solar plant in Ukraine

Ukrainian news agency Ukrinform has reported that a Russian missile strike has hit a ground-mounted solar plant in Merefa, close to the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv.

The missile strike hit the solar plant on the night of May 28. Ukrinform quoted local media outlet Suspilnie Kharkiv as saying that the project had been built on a former landfill site under Ukraine’s feed-in tariff scheme. It had been operational for about a year and a half.

According to the manager of the project, Volodymyr Ronchakovsky, the missiles produced holes at the site measuring 6 meters deep and 11 meters in diameter. The missiles were reportedly launched from Belgorod, western Russia.

In mid-March, the Ukrainian Association of Renewable Energy (UARE) said that 37% of the nation’s ground-mounted solar project capacity had been built in areas where armed conflict was taking place, with another 34% in adjacent areas. The UARE reported “registered cases of destruction” of solar panels and claimed that Russian forces “steal all the equipment from the stations – everything that can be stolen and taken away.”