Europe’s largest nuclear-fueled power plant, situated in Russian-occupied east Ukraine, is emerging as a focal point of the war as President Zelensky accuses the Kremlin of risking a continent-wide radioactive catastrophe by rigging the facility with explosives.  

Mr. Zelensky declined to say what intelligence has led him to that conclusion. The UN’s top nuclear inspector raised some doubt about Mr. Zelensky’s assertions, but several sources have told the Sun that while UN inspectors are on the ground at Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine has other forms of intelligence, including access to American high-resolution satellite images so detailed that “you can read the digits on a car license plate” from them.     

“We have information from our intelligence that the Russian military has placed objects resembling explosives on the roof of several power units of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant,” Mr. Zelensky tweeted Tuesday. “The only source of danger to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant is Russia and no one else.”

He responded, perhaps, to earlier Russian allegations that as part of their summer counter-offensive, Ukrainian troops are planning to shell the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant. 

“The Rusians have been hinting on the possibility that the Ukrainian forces would attack the plant, perhaps trying to create a false flag incident,” a Europe watcher at the American Enterprise Institute, Dalibor Rohac, tells the Sun. 

Following Kyiv’s warning, Russia latched on to doubts expressed by the International Atomic Energy Agency chief, Rafael Grossi. “I was there,” Mr.  Grossi told France 24 last week when asked about Kyiv’s allegation that Russia plans an attack on the Zaporizhzhia plant. “I did not see that kind of development. Our teams are there, they are reporting every day. I’m not privy to this intelligence report.”

Yet, Mr. Grossi warned that the situation around Zaporizhzhia is a cause for concern. “This plant is sitting on the front line, not near the front line, in the vicinity of the front line, a few kilometers from the front line — it’s on the front line,” he said. “So it is obvious that in the context of the counter-offensive and the military activities there, the plant is incredibly fragile and open to damage in case of fire there.”

Despite the plant’s heavy fortifications, a radioactive leak would spread widely if it were bombarded or if explosives were planted there.  The question, then, is who, if anyone, would benefit from a catastrophe that could be extremely hazardous to areas far beyond Ukraine.

That depends on which way the wind blows, an assistant professor of intelligence studies at Mercyhurst University at Erie, Pennsylvania, Fred Hoffman, says. “Currently the winds are blowing to the southwest,” he tells the Sun. After mid-July, they are forecast to reverse direction, which could push a prospective radioactive cloud “toward Russia.” 

Either way, Mr. Hoffman adds, “the Ukrainians have nothing to gain by doing this.” If anyone, “the Russians are the ones to benefit, especially if they start losing and need a diversion.” Even a mere Russian threat of an attack on Zaporizhzhia could serve as a warning to Europe to end its support of Kyiv, he says, so “NATO must make it clear to Russia that that is a red line.” 

The West failed to communicate such a red line in an earlier episode, the June 6 blowup of the Kakhovka dam in Russian-occupied eastern Ukraine. No independent determination was made as to who caused that catastrophic event that left entire Ukrainian towns inhabitable and cut off water cooling supplies to the nuclear plant at Zaporizhzhia.

Yet, there is little doubt that Russian forces in the area were responsible. “Whether it was due to negligence or intent on the Russian side, there is no way the Ukrainians have done it,” Mr. Rohac says.

Kyiv now says that the weak global reaction to the dam destruction would make it more difficult for the West to forcefully warn Russia against damaging the nuclear plant at Zaporizhzhia.

“Unfortunately, there was no timely and large-scale response to the terrorist attack on the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant, and this may incite the Kremlin to commit new evil, ” Mr. Zelensky said. “It is the responsibility of everyone in the world to stop it, no one can stand aside, as radiation affects everyone.”

When the Chinese Communist Party’s leader visited Moscow in March, Chairman Xi privately warned President Putin against using nuclear arms in the Ukraine war, according to several reports in the West and at Beijing. The Kremlin is denying such a warning was delivered. 

Either way, the prospect of a nuclear catastrophe resulting from an armed attack on a civilian plant now emerges as a scary scenario akin to the use of an atomic bomb.