Russian Army Turns Ukraine’s Largest Nuclear Plant Into a Military BaseLand mines and missile launchers are deployed at Zaporizhzhia, as cameras and instruments go dark and workers are held for ransom Drew Hinshaw and Joe Parkinson | July 5, 2022 | 11:41 am ETThe Russian army is transforming Europe’s largest nuclear power plant into a military base overlooking an active front, intensifying a monthslong safety crisis for the vast facility and its thousands of staff.
At the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in southern Ukraine, more than 500 Russian soldiers who seized the facility in March recently have deployed heavy artillery batteries, and laid anti-personnel mines along the shores of the reservoir whose water cools its six reactors, according to workers, residents, Ukrainian officials, and diplomats. The Ukrainian army holds the towns dotted on the opposite shore, some 3 miles away, but sees no easy way to attack the plant, given the inherent danger of artillery battles around active nuclear reactors.
The new infusion of weaponry effectively shields the plant from a counterattack by Ukrainian forces, and amounts to something the carefully regulated atomic-energy industry has never seen before: The slow-motion transformation of a nuclear power station into a military garrison. In a lesser-scrutinized aspect of its war strategy, the Russian army is day-by-day positioning the weaponry around a nuclear plant that is among the world’s largest, using it to cement control of the front line where their advance through southern Ukraine ground to a halt.
Russian forces deployed a Smerch artillery vehicle last month in the shadow of the 5.7 gigawatt complex’s striped chimneys, adding to the grad rocket launchers, tanks and personnel carriers. The earth around the plant is carved with trenches, with military guard dogs stationed out of a makeshift kennel. Senior technicians from Rosatom, Russia’s state atomic energy corporation, have set up a base in a guarded bunker beneath the plant.
“They are keeping it like a base for their artillery," said a European official posted to the nearby city of Zaporizhzhia, which remains in Ukrainian control. “They understand that Ukraine will not answer their attacks from the plant."
Ukrainian defense officials said that even if their forces could mount a conventional military effort to recapture the plant, they are focused on pushing a counteroffensive to the northeastern and southern cities of Kharkiv and Kherson.
“It seems like this is one of the Russian tactics, to take critical infrastructure and use it as a shield," said former Ukrainian Defense Minister Andriy Zagorodnyuk. “We’re not going to storm the plant….The only way to do it would be to surround it, to take the surrounding areas, and ask them to leave." . . .
https://www.wsj.com/articles/russian-army-turns-ukraines-largest-nuclear-plant-into-a-military-base-11657035694
