Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine- Ukraine has shut down the country’s last nuclear plant and Europe’s largest following concerns from the United Nations (UN).
On Friday, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN’s nuclear watchdog, said the situation at the plant was increasingly precarious after its offsite electricity supply line was cut again.
According to the Ukrainian nuclear power agency, Energoatom, the Russian-held nuclear plant move is meant to put the reactors into a safe state as fighting swirls around the facility in southern Ukraine.
“A decision was made to shut down power unit No. 6 and transfer it to the safest state, cold shutdown,” said Energoatom in a statement.
In addition, Vladimir Rogov, a member of the Zaporizhzhia Region administration, said the constantly changing mode in which the reactors and turbines were forced to operate, because of the attacks, created the risk of an accident.
Last week, shelling severed the transmission lines that provide external power to the plant which is occupied by Russian forces but operated by Ukrainian engineers disconnecting it from Ukraine’s national electricity grid.
Shutting down all of the reactors also means that a key source of electricity will not be available to a nation already facing a challenging winter. Before the war, the power plant provided 20 percent of Ukraine’s electricity, but energy officials said that the damage to transmission lines that carry electricity away from the plant had been so extensive during the war that it was unlikely it would have provided a reliable source of power.
Meanwhile, the Russian Defense Ministry has claimed that a cumulative total of 12 000 pro-Kyiv troops were either killed or wounded in southern and eastern Ukraine in a five-day period.
According to Lieutenant General Igor Konashenkov, the Ministry’s spokesperson, more than 4 000 Ukrainian troops were killed and another 8 000 injured between September 6 and 10 in the south and east of the country.
However, Ukraine’s counter-offensive in the northeast of the country has claimed it has inflicted an extraordinary defeat on Russia, prompting the Russian army to pull back thousands of troops after suffering a series of battlefield defeats.
Photos published by the Ukrainian security forces showed troops raising the national flag in Kupiansk, an important logistical hub for Russian forces in eastern Ukraine, where rail lines linking Russia to eastern Ukraine converge and which, in the last months, has supplied Russian forces in north-eastern Ukraine.
In a video address on Saturday, Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, said Ukrainian forces had liberated about 2 000 sq km (700 square miles) of territory since the counter-offensive against Russia started earlier this month, saying, “The Russian army these days is demonstrating its best ability to show its back.”
