L’Ukrainian operator Energoatom announced that the Ukrainian nuclear power plant in Zaporizhia, the largest in Europe, under Russian occupation after suffering bombardments, was reconnected to the electricity grid on Friday after being disconnected the day before.
“One of the reactors of the Zaporijia power plant, stopped the day before, was reconnected to the electricity grid today”, Friday, late morning, around 11 a.m., according to Energoatom, ensuring that its security systems were operating normally. The reactor “produces electricity for the needs of Ukraine” and “the increase in (its) power is in progress”, specifies the operator.
kyiv announced Thursday that the power plant, the largest in Europe, had been “totally disconnected” from the network “for the first time in its history”, due to damage to the power lines caused by “actions” of “the Russian ‘invader’.
The security of Zaporizhia, located near the front line, and the risk of a nuclear accident in the event of a bombardment have worried international leaders since it passed into the hands of Russian forces in early March. And even more in recent weeks, where Moscow and kyiv accuse each other of several bombings on the site.
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Energoatom assured that the security systems of the site, which has six reactors of 1,000 megawatts each, were operating normally. “Russia has put the Ukrainians, like all Europeans, on the brink of a nuclear catastrophe”, warned Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Thursday, six months to the day after the start of the invasion of his country. country.
The UN has called for the establishment of a demilitarized zone around the plant to secure it and allow the dispatch of an international inspection mission.
A mission from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is expected at the plant “next week”, according to the adviser to the Ukrainian Minister of Energy, Lana Zerkal, quoted by media, who accused the Russians “to artificially create obstacles so that the mission cannot reach this installation”.
“Civil nuclear power should not be an instrument of war,” French President Emmanuel Macron pleaded on Friday, while Russia is accused of having accumulated men, equipment and artillery in the plant.
US diplomacy has warned that any Russian attempt to divert Ukrainian nuclear energy would be “unacceptable”.
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25 dead in Tchapliné
On the military level, the Ukrainian presidency announced on Friday, during the last 24 hours, Russian strikes on the regions of Kharkiv (in the northeast, one dead, three civilians injured), Donetsk (in the east, two dead and seven wounded, with fighting concentrated in particular on Bakhmout and its surroundings) and Dnipropetrovsk (in the center, no casualties).
In this last region, the Russian army had bombarded the station of Tchapliné on Wednesday, causing many victims.
Friday, August 26, “rescue and search operations (were) completed in Tchapliné”, where the final toll is 25 dead, including 2 children aged 6 and 11, and 31 injured, wrote on Telegram the deputy head of the Ukrainian presidential administration, Kiril Tymoshenko.
Russia claims to have hit a military target at Chapliné. An Iskander missile “directly hit a military train in Chapliné station (…), eliminating more than 200 soldiers” Ukrainians, according to the Russian Ministry of Defense.
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In the region of Luhansk (East), which together with that of Donetsk forms the Donbass, the total conquest of which is Russia’s priority objective, “repeated enemy attacks have been repelled from four directions”, according to the Ukrainian presidency.
In the same region, “Ukrainian soldiers destroyed a base of the Russian occupiers” in the small town of Kadiivka, said Friday on Telegram the head of the regional military administration, Serguiï Gaïdaï. “The strike was so powerful that 200 Russian paratroopers (pejorative expression designating Russian fascists, editor’s note) were killed,” said Mr. Gaïdaï. The information could not be confirmed by an independent source.
Since the Russian withdrawal from the vicinity of kyiv at the end of March, most of the fighting has been concentrated in the east and south, where the fronts seem almost frozen.
On Thursday, against the backdrop of growing tensions with Western countries that support Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree ordering a 10% increase (more than 137,000 soldiers) in the number of his army, which suffered heavy casualties in the face of fierce Ukrainian resistance.
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TotalEnergies in the hot seat
In France, the French oil giant TotalEnergies thought it necessary to reaffirm on Friday that it “does not produce kerosene for the Russian army”.
The French group thus denied – again – information published in the French daily The worldgathered with the NGO Global Witness, according to which the gas it co-produces in Siberia ultimately ends up on Russian army bases.
TotalEnergies said in a statement on Friday that it had received new information from its Russian partner Novatek confirming that the fuel manufactured by their joint venture is not intended for Russian warplanes.
Asking “to put an end to this baseless controversy which is damaging the company’s reputation”, the group, which has already been embroiled in other scandals over the years (corruption in Russia, forced labor in Burma, etc.), is threatening to “take any legal action to put an end to it if it still proves necessary”.