Ukrainian national guard soldiers carry a bag containing the body of a Ukrainian soldier in an area near the border with Russia, in Kharkiv region, Ukraine, Monday, Sept. 19, 2022. In this operation, seven bodies of Ukrainian soldiers were recovered. on the battlefield in recent months. (AP Photo/Leo Correa) A Russian missile exploded in a crater near a nuclear plant in southern Ukraine on Monday, damaging nearby industrial equipment but not hitting its three reactors. Ukrainian authorities denounced the move as an act of “nuclear terrorism”. The missile struck within 300 meters (328 yards) of the reactors of the southern Ukraine nuclear power plant near the city of Yuzhnoukrainsk in Mykolaiv province, leaving a hole 2 meters (6 1/2 feet) deep and 4 meters wide, according to the Ukrainian nuclear operating company Energoatom. The reactors were operating normally and no employees were injured, it said. But the proximity of the strike has renewed fears that Russia’s nearly seven-month-old war in Ukraine could cause a radioactive disaster. This nuclear power plant is Ukraine’s second largest after the Zaporizhia Nuclear Power Plant, which has repeatedly come under fire. Following recent battlefield setbacks, Russian President Vladimir Putin threatened last week to step up Russian attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure. Throughout the war, Russia has targeted Ukraine’s power generation and transmission equipment, causing blackouts and compromising the safety systems of the country’s nuclear plants. The industrial complex that includes the Southern Ukraine plant is located along the Southern Bug River, about 300 kilometers (190 miles) south of the capital, Kyiv. The attack temporarily shut down a nearby hydroelectric plant and broke more than 100 windows at the complex, Ukrainian authorities said. The UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency said three power lines were down but later reconnected. Ukraine’s defense ministry released a black-and-white video showing two large fireballs exploding one after the other in the dark, followed by a shower of incandescent sparks, 19 minutes after midnight. The ministry and Energoatom called the attack “nuclear terrorism”. The Russian Defense Ministry did not immediately comment on the attack. Russian forces have seized the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant, the largest in Europe, since early after the invasion. The bombing has disrupted the plant’s transmission lines, forcing operators to shut down its six reactors to avoid a radioactive disaster. Russia and Ukraine have swapped responsibility for the strikes. The IAEA, which has installed monitors at the Zaporizhia plant, said a main transmission line was reconnected on Friday, providing electricity needed to cool its reactors. However, the mayor of Enerhodar, where the Zaporizhzhia plant is located, reported more Russian shelling on Monday in the city’s industrial zone. While warning on Friday of a possible increase in strikes, Putin claimed his forces had so far acted with restraint, but warned “if the situation develops this way, our response will be more serious.” “Just recently, the Russian armed forces have carried out some impressive strikes,” he said. “Let’s think of them as warning shots.” The latest Russian shelling killed at least eight civilians and wounded 22, Ukraine’s presidential office said Monday. The governor of the northeastern region of Kharkiv, now largely back in Ukrainian hands, said Russian shelling killed four medics trying to evacuate patients from a mental hospital and injured two patients. The mayor of the Russian-held eastern city of Donetsk, meanwhile, said Ukrainian shelling had killed 13 civilians and wounded eight there. Patricia Lewis, director of international security research at the Chatham House think-tank in London, said the attacks on the Zaporizhzhia plant and Monday’s strike on the plant in southern Ukraine showed that the Russian military was trying to disable Ukrainian nuclear plants before from winter. “It is a very, very dangerous and illegal act to target a nuclear power plant,” Lewis told The Associated Press. “Only the generals will know the intent, but there is clearly a pattern.” “What they seem to be doing every time is trying to cut power to the reactor,” he said. “It’s a very clumsy way to do it, because how accurate are these missiles?” Power is needed to run pumps that circulate cooling water in the reactors, preventing overheating and—in the worst case—a radioactive nuclear fuel meltdown. Other recent Russian raids on Ukrainian infrastructure have targeted power plants in the north and a dam in the south. They came in response to a sweeping Ukrainian counteroffensive in the east of the country, which retook Russian-held territory in the Kharkiv region. Analysts have noted that in addition to reclaiming land, challenges remain to its preservation. In a video speech on Monday, Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelenskyy hinted at this effort: “I cannot reveal all the details, but thanks to the Security Service of Ukraine, we are now sure that the invaders will have no foothold in Ukrainian territory”. The Ukrainian successes in Kharkiv – Russia’s biggest defeat since its forces were pushed out of Kyiv in the first stage of the invasion – have sparked rare public criticism of Russia and added to military and diplomatic pressure on Putin. Nationalist critics of the Kremlin have questioned why Moscow failed to plunge Ukraine into darkness by striking all its major nuclear power plants. In other developments: — A governor said Ukraine recaptured the village of Bilogorivka in the Russian-held eastern region of Luhansk. Russia has not acknowledged the claim. — Leaders of Ukraine’s Russian-settled regions of Luhansk, Donetsk and Kherson renewed calls Monday for referendums to formally join their regions with Russia. These officials have discussed such plans in the past, but referendums have been repeatedly delayed, possibly due to insufficient popular support. — The High Court in the Russian-held Luhansk region convicted a former interpreter for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and another person whose duties were not specified of high treason on Monday. Both were sentenced to 13 years in prison. —Baltic states Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania closed their borders Monday to most Russian citizens in response to domestic support for Russia over the war in Ukraine. Poland will join the ban on September 26. — Mega pop star Alla Pugacheva became the most prominent Russian celebrity to criticize the war, describing Russia in an Instagram post Sunday as a “pariah” and saying its soldiers were dying for “false goals.” Valery Fadeyev, head of the Russian president’s Human Rights Council, accused Pugacheva of disingenuously citing humanitarian concerns to justify her criticism and predicted that popular artists like her would enjoy less public influence after the war.
