The largest nuclear reactor in Europe is one of the targets that Russia will strike because it has “no red lines,” according to Ukraine.
The purported assault on the Kakhovka dam by Moscow in May, according to energy minister Herman Halushchenko, demonstrates just how far Vladimir Putin will go.
President Volodymyr Zelensky and Mr. Halushchenko alerted authorities that the Russians may have planted explosives to blow up the dam in October, he said.
He added: ‘For many, many people it sounded ridiculous… and when it happened everybody understood that there are no red lines for them.
‘And of course, it’s all connected to the counter-offensive operation, and after Kakhovka, the one tool which they still have is Zaporizhzhia.’
The Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant was seized in March 2022, during the first weeks of the war, and fears about a catastrophic incident akin to the Chernobyl disaster have circulated ever since.
Both Russia and Ukraine have repeatedly accused the other of shelling the site, but Mr Zelensky said last week Kyiv has new evidence about an ‘upcoming attack’.
Citing intelligence reports, Mr Zelensky alleged Russian troops had placed ‘objects resembling explosives’ atop several power units to ‘simulate’ an attack.
The Associated Press looked into drone and satellite images which showed white objects on the roof of the plant’s fourth power unit, but image experts could not identify them.
Jeffrey Lewis, a professor at the Middlebury Institute who specialises in satellite images, said if the objects do turn out to be a bomb, it is unlikely to cause serious damage to the reactor.
Ukraine started accusing the Kremlin of plotting a ‘large-scale provocation’ at the nuclear power plant, in the southeast Kherson region, around the time it launched its counter-offensive last month.
Russia has always denied the attack on the Kakhovka dam, a disaster which triggered a humanitarian disaster after intense flooding left villages and towns almost completely submerged in water.
Experts compared it to Chernobyl, with one telling the Financial Times: ‘The consequences are different, but the long-term effect on the population and the territory is the same.’
At the time, Ukraine’s deputy foreign minister also said the dam explosion was ‘the worst environmental disaster’ in Europe since the disaster in 1986.
He added: ‘Only this time Moscow deliberately used this weapon of mass destruction against the Ukrainians. Who else wants to negotiate with Putin?’
Putin claimed Ukraine had blown up the dam to restrict water supplies to Crimea and distract the world from a ‘faltering offensive’.
Over the weekend, a Ukrainian missile attack forced a major crossing linking Russia to annexed Crimea to close temporarily.
Traffic was halted in both directions of the Kerch Bridge after Russian air forces said they had shot down a rocket in the area.
The bridge is largely seen as a vanity project for Putin, who ordered the £3 billion crossing to be built after he illegally invaded Crimea in 2014.
It was severely damaged last October when a ‘truck bomb’ blew up and killed at least three people, Russian investigators said at the time.