The strike followed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s warnings of possible stepped-up attacks on key Ukrainian infrastructure after his forces suffered humiliating battlefield setbacks. The missile hit 300 meters from the Pivdennoukrainsk nuclear power plant, also known as the Southern Ukraine Nuclear Plant, according to Ukrainian nuclear power company Energoatom. Black-and-white CCTV footage released by Ukraine’s Defense Ministry showed two large fireballs exploding one after the other in the dark, followed by a shower of incandescent sparks. A timestamp on the video reads 19 minutes past midnight.
The second largest nuclear power plant
The ministry and Energoatom called the attack “nuclear terrorism”. The Russian Defense Ministry had no immediate comment. The United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the attack. The nuclear power plant is Ukraine’s second largest after the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which is Europe’s largest nuclear power plant and has repeatedly come under fire during the war. The two plants have reactors of the same design. Russian forces have occupied the Zaporizhzhia factory since the early days of Moscow’s nearly seven-month invasion. Repeated bombings disrupted its transmission lines, forcing operators to shut down its six reactors to avoid a radioactive meltdown. Russia and Ukraine have swapped responsibility for the strikes. The International Atomic Energy Agency said a main transmission line was reconnected on Friday, providing electricity needed by the Zaporizhzhia plant to cool its reactors. The IAEA has observers at the plant. While warning Friday of possible stepped-up strikes on Ukraine’s infrastructure, Putin claimed his forces had so far acted with restraint in responding to Ukraine’s efforts to strike Russian facilities. “If the situation develops in this way, our response will be more serious,” Putin said. “Just recently, the Russian armed forces carried out some spectacular strikes,” he said, referring to the attacks last week. “Let’s think of them as warning shots.”
All-night strikes
In addition to infrastructure, Russian forces also continue to pound other sites. The latest shelling killed at least eight civilians and wounded 22 others, Ukraine’s presidential office said Monday. Overnight, Russian forces struck two towns across the Dnieper River from the Zaporizhzhia plant, damaging dozens of buildings and cutting power to parts of Nikopol and Marhanets, the presidential office said. . In the village of Striletsa in the northeastern region of Kharkiv, Russian shelling killed four doctors trying to evacuate patients from a mental hospital and wounded two patients, Kharkiv Governor Oleh Syniehubov said. Russian strikes also hit Kramatorsk and Toretsk in the eastern Donetsk region, according to the presidential office. Energoatom said the blast from Monday’s missile attack shattered more than 100 windows at the industrial complex that includes the Pivdennoukrainsk plant. It also caused a nearby hydroelectric plant to temporarily shut down, he said. Ukraine’s presidential office said the attack also knocked out three power lines. The Pivdennoukrainsk nuclear power plant is seen in this May 2015 photo. (Olga Yakimovich/Reuters) The plant is located along the Southern Bug River in the southern Mykolaiv region, about 300 kilometers south of the capital, Kyiv. Patricia Lewis, director of international security research at the Chatham House think-tank in London, said the Zaporizhzhia plant attacks and Monday’s strike show a pattern of Russian military planners trying to shut down Ukrainian nuclear plants before winter targeting power supplies that maintain their function safely.
“Dangerous and illegal”
“It is very, very dangerous and illegal to target a nuclear power plant,” Lewis said in an interview. “Only the generals will know the intent, but there is clearly a pattern.” “What they seem to be doing every time is trying to cut the power to the reactor,” he said. “It’s a very clumsy way to do it, because how accurate are these missiles?” Other recent Russian raids on Ukrainian infrastructure have targeted power plants in the north and a dam in the south. They came in the wake of a sweeping Ukrainian counter-offensive in the country’s east that decimated Russian forces, reclaiming a large swath of previously held territory in the Kharkiv region and breaking what had largely become a stalemate in the war. The Russian retreat marked the biggest defeat for Moscow since it withdrew its forces from Kyiv after a failed attempt to capture the capital in the opening stages of the invasion.
