On Thursday, Europe’s biggest nuclear power plant lost its last remaining electric power supply line as the result of military conflict in the region – although Ukraine and Russia can’t agree on who was responsible.
Analysts have warned over the last two weeks that Russia could be preparing to disconnect the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant from the Ukrainian power grid in an effort to deprive the country of as much as one-fifth of its electric power supply. The news also comes after Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed to allow experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency to attend the nuclear facility in the coming weeks, and after the Kremlin also refused to move its military personnel off of the site.
Energoatom, the Ukrainian nuclear energy agency, revealed that fires at a nearby thermal power plant meant that the nuclear power plant’s last remaining power line was disconnected two times. All other power lines to the nuclear power plant were destroyed during military conflict. The Ukrainian energy agency said that the disconnection of the plant’s last remaining line was a direct result of Russian military aggression.
“The action of the invaders caused a complete disconnection of the ZNPP (Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant) from the power grid – the first in the history of the plant,” the agency said in a statement.
Russia blamed the problems on Ukraine, however. Yevgeny Balitsky, the Russian-installed regional governor of occupied Zaporizhzhia, said that the damage was caused by a Ukrainian strike on the facility.
A nearby diesel generator was used to ensure that the nuclear power plant remained operational and safe during the hours that the power line was severed.
Part Of A Wider Plan?
Energoatom president Petro Kotin warned that Russia was preparing to disconnect the plant from Ukraine’s power grid previously, telling The Guardian that Russian engineers had already drawn up a plan to divert the electricity produced by the plan to Russian-occupied parts of the country.
“They presented [the plan] to [workers at] the plant, and the plant [workers] presented it to us. The precondition for this plan was heavy damage of all lines which connect Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant to the Ukrainian system,” Kotin said on Wednesday, a day before the plant went offline.
If Kotin’s claims are true, it could mean that the strike on Thursday was part of a plan by the Russian military to temporarily take the plant offline and begin the process of reconnecting the plant to a modified grid designed to benefit Russian-occupied territory
Zelenskyy Says “Radiation Disaster” Averted
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy expressed some relief that the plant’s last remaining supply line was eventually restored on Thursday, hours after it was cut. Zelenskyy blamed Russian shelling for the fires at the nearby coal power station and thanked Ukrainian power plant workers for getting the facility operational again.
From Twitter: “An AZP S-60 57mm AA gun mounted on a truck used by UA forces- one example of the many improvised weapons appearing recently,”
“If our station staff had not reacted after the blackout, then we would have already been forced to overcome the consequences of a radiation accident,” Zelenskyy said. “Russia has put Ukraine and all Europeans in a situation one step away from a radiation disaster.”
Jack Buckby is a British author, counter-extremism researcher, and journalist based in New York. Reporting on the U.K., Europe, and the U.S., he works to analyze and understand left-wing and right-wing radicalization, and reports on Western governments’ approaches to the pressing issues of today. His books and research papers explore these themes and propose pragmatic solutions to our increasingly polarized society.
