WHAT RUSSIA’S UP TO: The situation at Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine’s largest nuclear power plant, currently occupied by Russian troops, has grown increasingly confusing in recent days—with U.N. officials, the State Department, and Ukraine’s state-owned power company issuing a string of fast-changing assessments regarding the safety of the plant’s operations. The fog of war has obfuscated Russia’s long-term goals for the plant. How it happened: Officials first sounded alarm last week when Russian shelling damaged an external power supply system at Zaporizhzhia last week. That prompted new and urgent warnings from nuclear authorities, including the head of the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog agency, Rafael Grossi, who said the fighting posed a “very real risk of nuclear disaster.”
Ukraine state-owned utility Energoatom claimed Monday that Russian forces said they had mined the plant and were planning to blow it up, citing remarks from the plant’s garrison commander, Russian Major Gen. Valery Vasiliev.
The confusion helps Russia pursue its real aim: Russia wants to disconnect Zaporizhzhia from Ukraine’s grid and attach it to its own in order to “basically steal Ukraine's energy” Doug Klain, assistant director of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center, told Breanne in an interview. Why it matters: Following Russia’s invasion in February, Ukraine disconnected its power grid from the Russian network to which it had always been linked, and connected to the EU’s power grid instead—speeding up a transition that was not expected for at least another year or two. Zaporizhzhia is Europe’s largest nuclear plant, and, combined with Ukraine’s 14 other reactors, generated roughly half of the country’s electricity prior to the start of the war.
Since connecting to the EU’s grid, Ukraine has more than doubled its volume of cheap electricity exports to the bloc—a welcome development for the EU as it stares down a looming energy crisis, and one that has undoubtedly infuriated the Kremlin.
“[Russia] wants to take all the power and reconnect it to a Crimea nuclear facility so that the energy and all of the connections would be fully in Russian territory,” the head of Ukraine’s Energoatom, Petro Kotin,told reporters today. Confusion helps Russia: The lack of information regarding the plant under occupation – Russia has denied entry to international inspectors – helps Russia advance that goal.
“Russia is somebody who really is taking advantage of the information vacuum to try to shape the narrative,” including by attempting to shift blame for recent shelling on Ukraine, at the same time that it's been trying to link the plant up to the Russian energy network, Klain said. That’s fitting with the Kremlin’s larger playbook: Russia has long relied on disinformation to further its geopolitical goals.
They’ve employed this approach in their occupation of Zaporizhzhia—regularly denying responsibility for the violence, and even blaming Ukraine for the shelling of its own plant.
Russia has “also been apparently stationing artillery and rocket systems there and firing them from the nuclear plant; using the place effectively as a giant nuclear shield,” Klain said. Russia is hoping to deter the West: “Russia has seen pretty good evidence that when it makes nuclear threats, Western countries like the United States, really get freaked out—and it's something that makes us very wary of supporting Ukraine and trying to help Ukraine win,” Klain said.
Moscow is likely hoping the West will pressure Ukraine to perhaps “dial back its counteroffensive, particularly in Zaporizhzhia,” at risk of touching off a nuclear catastrophe, he said.
Earlier today, Group of Seven foreign ministers issued a joint statement demanding that Russia immediately return the plant back to Ukraine.
Ukrainian personnel responsible for the plant’s operations “must be able to carry out their duties without threats or pressure,” they said, adding: “It is Russia’s continued domination of the nuclear power plant that endangers the region.”
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