Russian drone strike on civilian car kills 3 energy workers in Donetsk Oblast
Three workers at the Sloviansk Thermal Power Station in Donetsk Oblast were killed, and another was injured on Feb. 17 when a Russian first-person-view (FPV) drone struck their car, the Energy Ministry said.
The civilian car was struck in the town of Mykolaivka, which services the power plant, located east of the city of Sloviansk and only around 10 kilometers (6 miles) from the front line.
Another energy worker in the car was also injured, the region's state emergency service wrote soon after.
Russia's use of FPV drones against civilians in front-line areas — a blatant war crime first practiced at scale in Kherson — has escalated over recent years.
As Russian drone crews steadily increase the range of their weapons, including with the use of unjammable fiber optic cables, more Ukrainian settlements have come into range.
The deaths came on the morning after Russia's latest mass missile and drone attack against Ukrainian energy infrastructure, which saw almost 400 drones and over two dozen missiles launched at the country.
According to Ukrenergo, emergency blackouts were recorded in five Ukrainian regions, while two — Sumy and Odesa oblasts — also suffered from heating outages.
Especially vulnerable due to its proximity to the front line, the Sloviansk Power Plant has been put out of action several times over Russia's full-scale war.
Two workers were killed and five injured on the premises of the plant in October 2025, when a Russian glide bomb struck the plant's laboratory building.
