At a Ukrainian power plant repeatedly battered by Russian missile and drone barrages, the staff have a sense of deja vu.

Their work repairing the site from Russian strikes is routinely thwarted by fresh attacks, as Moscow hits the country's power network with record intensity.

AFP visited one power plant that has been struck multiple times -- after agreeing not to reveal its location -- run by private operator DTEK, to see how staff scramble to get the lights back on for houses and businesses across the country.

Following a recent attack, plumes of smoke were rising from a massive generator, still ablaze, at the centre of a blackened metal structure, once the heart of the plant.

Large sandbags protect critical infrastructure, some riddled with holes from shrapnel.

Out of the debris, a

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