Russia 'has sabotaged last power line into nuclear site'

Russia has been accused of deliberately sabotaging the last remaining power line into the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, after satellite imagery of the damaged area showed no sign of Ukrainian shelling that Moscow says is preventing a repair.

- Dan Sabbagh

Outside power, normally used for cooling, has now been down for a record eight days, forcing the Russian operators of the plant in occupied Ukraine to rely on backup diesel generators to avoid an eventual meltdown of its six reactor cores.

The photography was commissioned by Greenpeace and examined by experts at McKenzie Intelligence, in an effort to assess the damage at the Zaporizhzhia plant, which lies on the frontline of the war.

McKenzie Intelligence concluded there was “no evidence of any crater, either fresh or historic” around the damaged pylon and that it was still standing “and therefore should be a relatively simple task to repair”.

That contrasts with comments made last week by the Russian operators of the plant. The site’s communications director said that “restoration efforts [were] currently being complicated by ongoing shelling by the Ukrainian armed forces in the area of the plant and in the immediate vicinity of the damaged line”.

The plant’s final external power line, a 750 kilovolt connection, was cut at 4.56pm on Tuesday last week, creating a set of circumstances described by Rafael Grossi, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, as “clearly not a sustainable situation in terms of nuclear safety”.