Russia targets Dnipropetrovsk miners 2nd day in a row after deadly bus attack
Russia struck a coal mine operated by Ukraine's biggest private energy firm, DTEK, in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast for the second time over the past day, the company said on Feb. 2.
The Feb. 2 attack damaged administrative buildings at the facility. No casualties were reported in the strike, according to the statement.
The news follows a deadly Russian drone attack on a bus carrying miners, which killed at least 12 people and injured 16 others on Feb. 1. in the town of Ternivka.
The attack represents the largest single loss for DTEK since the start of the full-scale war, CEO Maksym Timchenko said.
Feb. 2 was declared a day of mourning in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast in memory of the miners killed in the recent strike.
According to Serhii Beskrestnov, an adviser to Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov, Russian drone operators made a deliberate decision to attack civilians.
Beskrestnov said a group of Shahed-type drones was flying along the road when the operator of the first drone spotted the bus and chose to strike it.
Ukraine had 145 coal mines in 2014, when Russia started its war against Ukraine, but only 14 remain operational today due to Russia's occupation and continued attacks, Mykhailo Volynets, chairperson of the Independent Trade Union of Miners of Ukraine, told the Kyiv Independent on Feb. 2.
"The Russian aggressor is daily targeting the mines," Volynets said.
"Russia attacks coal enterprises, energy facilities, substations, and specifically the mining territories. .... There is not a day that goes by without miners having to be lifted to the surface from de-energized mines in emergency conditions."
