Pictured: Female ‘Russian spy’ who was detained over ‘plot to assassinate Ukraine’s President Zelensky in an air strike’

By Mark Nicol Diplomacy Editor For The Daily Mail

Updated: 20:22 EDT, 7 August 2023

Russia may be plotting to blow up Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, Kyiv has warned, after explosions at a major dam and hydroelectric plant caused mass flooding in the Kherson region and sparked a humanitarian disaster.

The Zaporizhzhia power plant is the largest nuclear power facility in Europe, and sits roughly 80 miles up the Dnieper river from the Kakhovka dam, which was heavily damaged in explosions on June 6. 

Since Russian troops invaded Ukraine in February 2022, fears of a nuclear disaster have been sparked on several occasions when the plant was shelled and was temporarily disconnected from Ukraine’s power grid some six times.

Those fears rose again when Ukrainian officials said the Zaporizhzhia power plant may be affected by the destruction of Kakhovka dam, whose water provides vital cooling for the nuclear reactors. 

Ukraine’s state nuclear company Energoatom later assuaged those fears when it declared that the Zaporizhzhia facility’s cooling pond was full and had enough reserves to manage. 

But Zelensky‘s top security official Oleksiy Danilov later said Putin’s next step may be to attack the Zaporizhzhia plant, which could result in catastrophic nuclear consequences.

With the help of Darya Dolzikova and Jack Watling of the RUSI think-tank, MailOnline examines whether Russia could – or would – risk destroying Europe’s largest nuclear power plant. 

Could Russia blow up the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant?

Yes. The power plant – Europe’s largest – sits on ground that is currently occupied by Russia and its troops are stationed at the plant. They are thought to have mined it, and have stored ammunition and explosives in and around the reactor buildings.

In April this year, a Russian mine exploded near the engine room of the fourth nuclear reactor, according to Ukraine’s nuclear power agency.

As Ukraine has built up towards its counter-offensive, more Russian units have been moved to the plant and defensive positions have been built on the roof. There are currently more troops at the plant than civilian staff.

Russian forces could therefore set off either a deliberate or accidental explosion at the site.

Would Russia blow up the plant?

Potentially. Russian officials responsible for the occupation of Ukraine do think in these terms, they have debated it, and it could offer some value to them.

The fact that it would cause suffering to Ukrainian civilians, Russian soldiers at the plant, and potentially fallout inside Russia itself should not be viewed as a deterrent.

Russian authorities have repeatedly warned about the risks of a dirty bomb attack in Ukraine or false-flag attacks on the plant, creating a pretext to blame Kyiv for any disaster.

There is no indication that Moscow has decided whether or not to sabotage the plant, but it does indicate Kremlin military planners are keeping the option on the table.

Why would Russia blow up the plant?

If Ukraine’s troops were to break through Russian defensive lines in the south, then sabotaging the plant could help to slow or stop the advance.

Blowing up the plant would force Ukrainian troops to deal with the fallout – which would almost certainly affect several major cities – rather than continue their attack.

The effects of the fallout could also deny Ukrainian troops an avenue of advance for future attacks.

Or Russia could stop short of causing an explosion.

Setting in motion events that would lead to disaster – such as turning off power to the cooling systems – would force Ukrainian troops to divert to deal with it, slowing them down.

Russia may also reason that threatening destruction of the power plant may be enough to force Ukraine to alter its battle plans to avoid the area.

Moscow could use the threat of disaster at the plant as a way to pressure Ukraine’s western allies, without having to resort to nuclear weapons.

The possibility that Russia may manufacture a radiological incident at the power plant to spoil a Ukrainian offensive should not be disregarded.

What would be the fallout from the disaster?

While the Chernobyl nuclear disaster looms large in people’s minds, the effects of a disaster at Zaporizhzhia would likely be in line with what happened at Fukushima.

In that incident, an earthquake and tsunami caused the meltdown of several reactors at the Japanese plant and an explosion which breached one of the containment buildings.

Though not on the scale of the Chernobyl blast of 1986, it still resulted in the evacuation of 100,000 as a result of radioactive contamination in the areas around the reactor.

In the case of Zaporizhzhia, the nuclear plant is located less than 10 miles from the city of Nikopol which had a pre-war population of 115,000 and would almost certainly be affected.

The city of Zaporizhzhia itself is less than 35 miles away and housed 750,000 people before the war, while Dnipro and Kryvyi Rih – which together accounted for some 1.5million people – are within a 70-mile radius.

Experts have previously warned that prevailing winds at the plant could easily carry the fallout into Russian-occupied areas, and potentially into Russia itself.

Kyiv renewed its plea for operational silence around the long-awaited counter-offensive against Russian forces with a clip of heavily-armed soldiers pressing their fingers to their lips.

The sleekly-produced footage features masked front-line troops gesturing for silence amid the distant rumble of artillery and gunfire.

It ends with images of soaring F-16 fighter jets – long coveted by Kyiv as it seeks to boost its air defence against Russian missiles and drones.

Authorities in recent days have cracked down on citizens sharing images or footage of air defence systems shooting down Russian missiles.

‘Plans love silence. There will be no announcement of the start,’ the ministry said in a video posted to official Telegram channels, apparently referring to the counter-offensive.

Anticipation has mounted around what is expected to be a broad attack by Ukrainian forces to retake Russian-occupied territory in the east and south.

It comes after months of clashes around the devastated city of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine in what had become the war’s longest and bloodiest battle. 

Ukrainian officials have repeatedly discouraged public speculation over the counter-offensive operation, saying it could help the enemy.

Kyiv’s Western allies in recent months have provided weapons, armour and ammunition for the counter-offensive, which military experts have said could prove difficult against dug-in Russian forces.

In an interview published on Saturday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Kyiv was prepared for the operation but avoided making any predictions.

‘We strongly believe that we will succeed,’ Zelensky told the Wall Street Journal.

‘To be honest, it can go a variety of ways, completely different,’ he said. 

‘But we are going to do it, and we are ready.’

Kyiv hopes a counter-offensive to reclaim territory will change the dynamics of the war that has raged since Russia invaded its smaller neighbour 15 months ago.

Zelensky said last month Ukraine needed to wait for more Western armoured vehicles to arrive before launching the counter-offensive. 

He has been on a diplomatic push to maintain Western support, seeking more military aid and weapons, which is key for Ukraine to succeed in its plans.

Russia holds swathes of Ukrainian territory in the east, south and southeast.

A long spell of dry weather in some parts of Ukraine has driven anticipation that the counter-offensive might be imminent. 

Over several weeks, Ukraine has increased its strikes on Russian ammunition depots and logistical routes.

On Saturday, Ukraine’s military said in a daily report that Mariinka in the Donetsk region in the east was the focus of fighting. 

Ukrainian forces repelled all 14 Russian troops’ attacks there, the report said.

Other senior officials, including Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov, have similarly sought to tamp down expectations.

In some cases, however, the military has also fed the anticipation. Social media outreach by Kyiv has often been intended to intimidate the Kremlin.

Last week, it posted a flashy video depicting troops preparing for battle and reciting a rousing blessing, which was later aired as a recruiting clip.

Ukraine’s deputy defence minister has said that Russia is targeting key cities and ‘decision-making centres’ in order to prevent Ukraine’s counter-offensive. 

Volodymyr Havrylov said that Ukraine had faced repeated volleys of ballistic missiles in May, especially in urban centres including the capital, Kyiv.

‘Their primary goal is to stop our counter-offensive and target decision-making centres,’ Havrylov said at Asia’s top security conference, the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore.

For Russia ‘it was a huge surprise to find that the effectiveness of (their ballistic missiles) was almost zero against modern air defence systems, which we received from our partners,’ he added.

Dr Ihor Zhovkva, deputy head of the president’s office and his chief foreign affairs adviser, has said that Ukraine’s counter-offensive has not yet started because Kyiv still lacks the weapons and ammunition to drive out the Russians and take back the country.

Zhovkva said the military required more reinforcements to start the operation, which was originally billed as a spring offensive but will now take place in summer.

‘I’m not a military man,’ he told The Sunday Times. ‘I’m working on the diplomatic front and my task is more weapons, more support, more ammunition. But if you want to start a successful counter-offensive you need everything at your disposal, including artillery, armoured vehicles and tanks, so probably we don’t have enough.’

Zhovka believes that Russia is attempting to keep Ukraine from attacking by bombing Kyiv, which has experienced 24 attacks in the past month, with more than 400 Iranian Shaheed drones and 114 cruise missiles involved, costing $1.7 billion, according to estimates from the Kyiv Post.

Zhovka spoke out against the European Union for allowing Russia to keep profiting from its energy resources, meaning that it can buy more missiles while draining Ukraine’s defensive weapon stocks. 

Zhovka said: ‘Sorry, but the European countries are still too slow and not doing enough with sanctions. Russia can still earn a huge amount of money trading its energy resources including gas, earning dollars and euros, and every euro and dollar is spent on producing more missiles and artillery to kill more Ukrainians.’

Kyiv’s armed forces said on Sunday that clashes are continuing around the city of Bakhmut and Moscow is still suffering ‘significant losses’ despite a relative easing of combat operations in recent days. 

Russia claimed late last month to have captured Bakhmut following the protracted battle that has seen heavy casualties on both sides, but Ukraine says its forces still retain a small foothold and denies that Moscow is in full control of the city.

Ukraine’s top military command said in its daily report on Sunday that Russian forces had carried out two unsuccessful operations around Bakhmut and launched a number of air strikes and artillery shelling on nearby villages.

It said some 23 combat clashes had taken place over the past 24 hours in the Donetsk region, where Bakhmut is located, and in neighbouring Luhansk. Russia claims to have annexed both regions from Ukraine, along with three others, including Crimea.

‘The enemy continues to suffer significant losses in the Bakhmut direction,’ the commander of Ukraine’s ground forces, Oleksandr Syrskyi, said on the Telegram messaging app on Saturday after visiting troops in the area. 

‘Defence forces continue to fight. We will win.’

Meanwhile, Zelensky has said that Russia’s war, now in its 16th month, has killed at least 500 Ukrainian children.

He provided the number hours after rescue workers found the body of a two-year-old girl who died near the city of Dnipro in one of the latest Russian strikes.

The president said in a statement that ‘Russian weapons and hatred, which continue to take and destroy the lives of Ukrainian children every day’, killed the hundreds who had perished since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine started on February 24, 2022.

‘Many of them could have become famous scholars, artists, sports champions, contributing to Ukraine’s history,’ he said.

Zelensky said it was impossible to establish the exact number of children who were casualties due to the ongoing hostilities and because some areas are under Russian occupation.

Ukraine’s western allies are ‘all running out’ of weapons to donate, the UK Defence Secretary has said, meaning they may have to buy more to keep Kyiv‘s forces supplied in the face of Russian aggression.

Ben Wallace said that while Western support for Ukraine remains steadfast, ‘we have seen reality, which is that we are all running out’ of defence equipment to donate. 

While Western weapons stockpiles may be dwindling, Russian forces are already lacking in much-needed equipment, he said, with a stark warning that: ‘if you punch Russian forces in the wrong place, they’ll collapse’.

The Defence Secretary was also confident about the progress of the Ukrainian forces, even suggesting that Ukraine could retake Crimea as early as this year in his interview with The Washington Post.

It comes after Rishi Sunak reiterated the UK’s unfaltering military support for Ukraine last week, as Britain sent its most potent non-nuclear missile, the Storm Shadow, to support the resistance against Vladimir Putin’s invasion.

The donation made the UK the first Western country to offer long-range cruise missiles to Ukraine, and added to the extensive variety of weapons gifted to Kyiv by the British government.

Britain has pledged tanks, missile launching systems, NLAW anti-tank weapons, tanks and drones to Ukraine.

The UK has so far committed £4.6 billion in arms, the second most of Ukraine’s allies behind the US ($37.6 billion).

It was reported last month that the US has so far sent weapons valued at about $21.1bn to from its stockpiles, including HIMARS launchers, Javelin anti-tank weapons and a surface-to-air missile system.

Mr Wallace’s assessment of existing munitions levels comes after strategic analyst Howard Wheeldon shared concerning analysis around Britain’s military capability earlier this week.

He told the Mail: ‘All credit to the UK government for its fast response and actions, but the sad fact is that after providing an unquantified number of probably time-expired Storm Shadow missiles, the UK has little else it can give.

‘The notion that we might also have been able to provide fast jet capability left much to be desired, for the simple reason we haven’t got enough to defend the UK and continue our international commitments.

‘When it comes to equipment capability and overall available capacity, we are a nation that, when it comes to defence, is already drained of available resource.’

A report published in March outlined that if donations to Ukraine continue at their current rate, it would take ten years for British weapon stocks to reach an acceptable level. 

Addressing the London Defence Conference last week, the Prime Minister said that the UK is committed to supplying Ukraine with weapons over the long-term.

Mr Sunak said: ‘We were the first country to provide [Ukraine] with main battle tanks and longer-range weapons, we’ve also helped with air defence and trained Ukrainian forces.

‘We’ve led the charge on making sure they’ve had the resources and we are going to be steadfast in our support of Ukraine. Our support is not going to go away.

‘Ukraine can count on its allies, particularly the UK, to continue supporting them. We are united.’

Mr Sunak added that Britain was ‘leading the conversation’ with its allies on what long-term agreements can be made with Ukraine to ensure the country’s security.

The Prime Minister also reiterated his ambition to increase UK defence spending to 2.5 per cent of GDP – but did not set a date for doing so.