The Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station has enormous value as an energy asset in a war marked by the Russian bombardment of Ukrainian energy infrastructure. The strategic significance of the district only has grown since September, when Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree claiming the plant a “federal property” of the Russian government. Ukraine’s reclamation of Kherson further south has raised the specter of fighting to cut the “land bridge” linking Russian forces in annexed Crimea to the troops-occupied Donbas and Russia proper.

“They might try to challenge Russia in Zaporizhzhia Oblast,” a second senior European official surmised in a conversation with the Washington Examiner in a recent discussion of Ukrainian military options following the Russian retreat from Kherson. “They might cut the Russians into two parts, so you have Donbas on the one hand with Mariupol. On the other hand, you have part of Zaporizhzhia, part of Kherson oblast, and the Crimea.”

Russian and Ukrainian officials throughout the conflict have accused each other of shelling near the plant or taking other steps to jeopardize the security of the facility. An eruption of strikes in recent days represented the latest “close call,” according to the United Nations’s nuclear watchdog.

“One Russian milblogger claimed that the shelling came from Russian-controlled territory south of the plant, but most Russian sources accused Ukraine,” the Institute for the Study of War noted Sunday.

A team of monitors from the International Atomic Energy Agency, which described the plant as “Europe’s largest nuclear power plant,” certified that “key equipment remained intact and there were no immediate nuclear safety or security concerns,” while Russia’s lead nuclear agency called for a “security zone” to be created around the plant. (Read more from “Russia and Ukraine Face Showdown for Europe’s Largest Nuclear Power Plant” HERE)

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