(CN) — Fears of a radiation leak hung over Europe on Friday as fighting threatened a massive nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine now in danger of losing its power supply.
The war in Ukraine has been raging for 184 days, with no end in sight for the fierce combat across front lines that extend for more than 500 miles. Eastern Ukraine's Donetsk region has seen the worst of the fighting, as has the area around Mykolaiv, a southern city under Ukrainian control that stands in the way of Russian advances on Odesa, a pivotal port and the country's third largest city.
Russia on Thursday claimed responsibility for a strike on a train station in Chaplyne that killed more than 200 Ukrainian soldiers on their way to the front lines. The strike happened a day earlier, Ukraine's Independence Day. Speaking to the United Nations Security Council, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russia of targeting civilians in the Chaplyne attack.
Ukraine then reported its own deadly strike Friday, stating that more than 200 Russian paratroopers were killed when rockets hit a hotel in Kadiivka, a town in the eastern region of Luhansk. Claims of strikes causing massive casualties are reported regularly by both sides; military experts believe both sides have lost tens of thousands of troops.
The war is at risk of escalating even further should fighting lead to a nuclear disaster at the Soviet-era Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station, Europe's largest nuclear plant built along a massive reservoir of the Dnieper River in southern Ukraine. The plant's six reactors generate up to a third of Ukraine's electricity. It now supplies power to territories under the control of both Russian and Ukrainian armies.
Fighting over control of the plant has raged since early August, and Russia briefly took control of the facility in March. This month, the plant has come under attack as Ukrainian and Russian forces fight each other from across the Dnieper River in pivotal battles for control of Ukraine's Black Sea territories.
Moscow accuses Ukrainian forces of launching missiles at the plant, while Kyiv says Russian forces are using the facility as a military base and seeking to divert its power supply away from Ukrainian-held territories. Inspectors with the International Atomic Energy Agency may visit the site in the coming days.
“Almost every day there is a new incident at or near the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant. We can’t afford to lose any more time,” said Rafael Grossi, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency. “I’m determined to personally lead an IAEA mission to the plant in the next few days to help stabilize the nuclear safety and security situation there.”
On Thursday, forest fires caused by rockets and missile strikes reportedly forced the plant to rely on backup power supplies after it was disconnected from Ukraine's power grid. Easing immediate fears of a disaster, however, the plant was seemingly back on the grid by Friday. Thursday saw power go out across parts of Ukraine.
Ukrainian military experts see the war as having entered a decisive new phase to prevent Russia from taking complete control of their country’s Black Sea territories.
“The total control of the Black Sea is one of the main strategic ideas of theirs and for us it would be a geopolitical disaster,” Andrii Zahorodniuk, a former Ukrainian defense minister, said during a government briefing this week.
Zahorodniuk said Russia wants to drag Ukraine into a “war of exhaustion” after it failed to achieve its goals at the start of the invasion when it tried to mount a blitzkrieg and capture Kyiv.
“If the quick war failed with quick counteroffensives — either from this side or that side — then we have the war of exhaustion. This is the long war for years, this is the war for resources, the war of attrition,” Zahorodniuk said.
