NIKOPOL, Ukraine — Alongside a lot of the entrance line in Russia’s struggle in Ukraine, when one facet lets free with an artillery assault, the opposite shoots again.
However not in Nikopol, a metropolis deep in southern farm nation the place the Ukrainian army faces a brand new and vexing impediment because it prepares for a serious counteroffensive: a nuclear energy station that the Russian Military has become a fortress.
Nikopol, managed by the Ukrainians, lies on the west financial institution of the Dnipro River. On the alternative financial institution sits a huge nuclear energy plant — Europe’s largest — that the Russian Military captured in March. The Russians have been firing from the quilt of the Zaporizhzhia station since mid-July, Ukrainian army and civilian officers mentioned, sending rockets over the river at Nikopol and different targets.
It’s, in impact, a free shot. Ukraine can not unleash volleys of shells in return utilizing American-provided superior rocket techniques, which have silenced Russian weapons elsewhere on the entrance line. Doing so would danger placing one of many six pressurized water reactors or extremely radioactive waste in storage. And Russia is aware of it.
“They’re hiding there so that they can’t be hit,” mentioned Oleksandr Sayuk, the mayor of Nikopol. “Why else would they be on the electrical station? To make use of such an object as a defend may be very harmful.”
Residents have been fleeing Nikopol due to the risks of each shelling and of a possible radiation leak. And those that stay really feel helpless, as if they’re targets in a capturing gallery.
“We’re like condemned prisoners who should simply stand nonetheless and be shot at,” mentioned Halyna Hrashchenkova, a retiree whose dwelling was hit by Russian artillery. “They shoot at us, and there may be nothing we will do.”
The assaults from the nuclear plant are complicating Ukraine’s plans within the south, which has turn out to be the focus of the struggle as Russian advances within the east have slowed.
The Ukrainian Military has for greater than two months been telegraphing an intention to counterattack on the west financial institution of the Dnipro River, with the aim being to liberate the town of Kherson. Utilizing a long-range American rocket-launching system generally known as HIMARS, Ukraine has been softening up Russian positions and slicing provide traces. This month rocket strikes destroyed a highway and railroad bridges pivotal for Russian resupply of forces on the west financial institution, to the south of Nikopol, nearer to Kherson.
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Because the counterattack picks up, the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant poses a quandary. Russian forces have occupied the nuclear website since March 4 however started utilizing it for artillery strikes solely three weeks in the past, Ukrainian officers say, about when HIMARS appeared on the battlefield. Shielded from return fireplace, the Russians are menacing Ukrainian troops advancing towards the Nova Kakhovka dam on the Dnipro River, one of many final remaining crossing factors for Russian resupply.
It’s a drawback Ukraine must clear up because it strikes troops and gear into the realm for the counteroffensive.
The Ukrainian Military’s retaliatory choices at Nikopol are restricted. One tactic it has tried is to execute precision strikes that keep away from, as a lot as doable, the chance of damaging the reactors. On July 22, as an example, Ukraine’s army intelligence company reported a strike with a kamikaze drone that blew up an antiaircraft set up and a Grad rocket launcher and that killed troopers in a tent camp about 150 yards from a reactor.
The combating close to the facility plant has renewed worries that the struggle will set off a launch of radiation in a rustic chockablock with delicate and harmful nuclear websites, together with Chernobyl, which Russia occupied in March however then deserted. Final
Friday, an enormous, roiling plume of black smoke rose a couple of miles south of the reactors at Zaporizhzhia, and the Ukrainian army mentioned it had hit a Russian ammunition depot.
When the Russian Military seized the Zaporizhzhia plant in March, fight ignited a fireplace — and a great deal of fear about nuclear security. In that combating, shrapnel hit however didn’t breach the containment construction of Reactor No. 1. Three of the six reactors are energetic now, and the others are idled or present process repairs.
Solely a direct strike with a strong weapon would penetrate the reactors’ yard-thick concrete containment vessels, mentioned Dmytro Orlov, the exiled mayor of the town of Enerhodar, the place the reactor is, and a former engineer on the plant. But when that occurred, it could danger a meltdown or explosion that might unfold radiation on the wind inside Ukraine and past, as occurred at Chernobyl in 1986, the world’s worst nuclear catastrophe.
One other danger is {that a} shell might hit the extremely radioactive spent gasoline saved in concrete canisters and unfold radiation domestically within the open air, like a unclean bomb.
The fatigue and stress of the Ukrainian management room workers on the reactor are additionally a priority. Russian troopers have subjected them to harsh interrogations, together with torture with electrical shocks, suspecting them of sabotage or of informing the Ukrainian army about actions on the plant, Mr. Orlov mentioned. A few dozen have vanished after being kidnapped, he mentioned.
The location is in a nuclear regulatory limbo. The Russian army controls the plant, however Ukrainian engineers function it. The Russians enable Ukrainian truck convoys throughout the entrance line with spare components and chemical substances wanted to course of cooling water. Ukrainian nuclear regulators additionally cross the entrance to go to the plant. Rosatom, the Russian state nuclear firm, has dispatched a couple of dozen engineers to observe its operation.
Throughout the river in Nikopol, the hospitals maintain an emergency provide of iodine tablets to deal with radiation publicity, a precaution that predated the struggle. Little else may be carried out to guard the inhabitants, mentioned Mr. Sayuk, the mayor.
Final Friday, the strolling paths on the town’s riverfront esplanade had been abandoned, although it was a wonderful day.
The paths neglected the nuclear plant’s cooling towers and the column of black smoke close by — all boding in poor health for Nikopol residents. Those that stay on the town maintain principally to their houses.
Over the previous three weeks, the Russian army has parked Grad a number of rocket launchers between the reactor buildings, to guard them from retaliatory strikes, mentioned Mr. Orlov, who’s in contact with plant workers.
The Russians have additionally parked an armored personnel provider and Ural army vehicles within the turbine room of Reactor No. 1. The automobiles block a fireplace entry route, Mr. Orlov mentioned, posing a hazard to all the plant. His assertions couldn’t be independently verified.
The strikes have been hitting houses seemingly at random within the metropolis’s outlying district, punching craters in vegetable gardens, beginning fires and blowing out home windows.
Ms. Hrashchenkova’s home was hit by a artillery shell that didn’t explode, sparing her and her dwelling. Elsewhere on the town, artillery crushed roofs and blew holes in brick partitions.
The company has additionally publicly appealed to residents of close by Enerhodar to interact in partisan resistance that might not pose a danger to the plant. The Russian-installed mayor of Enerhodar was wounded in a bombing in Might. This month, a Russian discipline kitchen on the station mysteriously exploded, wounding troopers.
And Ukrainian artillery officers have had no qualms about concentrating on the Russian army in Enerhodar, which is about two miles from the plant. In a single day from Thursday to Friday, explosions destroyed two vehicles and broken a lodge the place Russians quartered, wounding eight troopers, Mr. Orlov mentioned.
“The Russian army is starting to really feel uneasy and perceive that they aren’t there without end, as they are saying, however quickly they are going to both be killed or give up to Ukrainian captivity,” Petro Kotkin, the president of Ukraine’s nationwide nuclear energy firm, Energoatom, instructed the Ukrainian information media.
Nonetheless, the nuclear plant presents a novel problem that Ukraine has not needed to cope with beforehand within the struggle.
Col. Serhiy Shatalov, who has been main a Ukrainian infantry battalion on a creeping, village-by-village advance towards the Nova Kakhovka dam, mentioned Russian artillery had principally gone quiet after a couple of weeks of HIMARS strikes — besides from the Russian items on the nuclear energy plant.
“How can we reply?” he mentioned. “This can be a nuclear website.”
Of the Russians’ use of the reactors for canopy, he mentioned, “don’t seek for equity in struggle, particularly for those who battle the Russians.”
Yurii Shyvala contributed reporting.