Washington's Ukraine power grab leaves more questions than answers

As a demand, it is Donald Trump at his most confusing. The US president appears, at least according to Marco Rubio, his secretary of state, to have told Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Wednesday that "American ownership" of Ukraine's four nuclear power stations would be their best protection in future - although the Ukrainian president said yesterday: "The issue of property, we did not discuss."

- Dan Sabbagh

Of the four, the most significant, and the one that Trump has repeatedly referred to in the past week, is the vast, six-reactor Zaporizhzhia power station. It is Europe's biggest nuclear generator, located on the southern bank of the Dnipro River. Before the full-scale Russian invasion it produced about 20% of the country's electricity, but it is now on the frontline of Europe's largest war since 1945. Such is the power station's importance that it was seized by Russia in the first month of fighting and it has remained on the frontline ever since.

Electricity generation was halted in September 2022 - it is simply too dangerous and too many pre-war employees have fled. All six reactors have been in cold shutdown (running below boiling point) since April last year.