Ostriv beach, mid-May 2023. Several Czech hedgehogs set up by the Ukrainian army stand on the shore. These are anti-tank installations made of metal rods that are intended to prevent Russian troops from landing. Next to it is the dam wall, which is being dismantled for this purpose. On the other side are children’s swings painted blue and white, gymnastic bars and wooden benches, as well as an abandoned, flooded ditch. Opposite, on the other bank of the Dnipro River, loom the six nuclear reactors of the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant, Europe’s largest nuclear power producer. The power plant has been under Russian control since March 4, 2022, when it was seized days after Moscow began invading Ukraine. Olga Muja, a local resident, casts her gaze across the water at them: “If this explodes, there will only be a shadow left of us.”
A sign on the beach warns that bathing is prohibited, but little attention was paid to the instruction last summer. Local residents swam and basked in the sun, trying to maintain normal life. But it’s hard to forget the war in this village. Distant explosions can occasionally be heard. Ostriv lies between the Russian positions and Nikopol and Marhanets in the Dnepropetrovsk region, two cities constantly under the Kremlin’s artillery target. The village is on the attack route to both communities.
“Most of the people left here,” says Olga, 66. “We hear shots, Grad rockets, artillery every day and we’re very scared.” I don’t understand what this war is about or why they want to kill us.” She says she has no intention of leaving, this is her home and that she wants to keep working in her garden and looking after her chickens and orchard of 100 fruit trees. One of her six sons is fighting on the Bakhmut front. He calls her regularly: “Hello, I’m fine, I’m alive.”
Olga Muja, 66, with a neighbor in the garden of their home in the village of Ostriv. LOUIS DE VEGA
Two of Olga’s neighbors, Raisa Sitnichenko, 76, and Valentina Riabchenko, 73, explain that they receive humanitarian aid, including water and food, once a month, but that life here is extremely difficult. Valentina sometimes stays at her son’s house in Marhanets when things get really bad. “These houses are old and we don’t have shelters,” Raisa adds.
The closest major town to Ostriv is Nikopol, also opposite the nuclear power plant, which is located in Energodar. The road between the two communes is teeming with partridges and especially pheasants. With hunting banned for over a year because of the war, there are many more birds and they quietly stroll the streets with their long tails and brightly colored feathers.
Explosions can be heard again in Nikopol, and across the Dnipro the six reactors of the nuclear power plant are even larger. The area is a red zone as designated by the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. A red zone means that journalists are not allowed in without express permission and must be accompanied by a military officer at all times.
Raisa Stnelcova, 80, and Nadia Suslova, 72, two residents of Nikopol, Dnepropetrovsk province. LUIS DE VEGA
Under martial law, imposed in February 2022 when the invasion began, the Ukrainian army has wide-ranging powers, including basic rights such as the right to information and freedom of movement. Permission to enter a red zone may or may not be granted in a matter of days, depending on priorities at the time. The Bakhmut Front is a red zone based on the logic that journalists’ lives are in extreme danger there and troop movements are secret. Nikopol is a red zone due to its proximity to Energodar and the nuclear power plant. From unknown locations along this stretch of the Dnipro, Ukrainian special forces have been probing Russian defenses at the station using fast, small-scale amphibious assaults.
Raisa Stnelcova, 80, and Nadia Suslova, 72, walk past a four-story building in Nikopol that was shelled at 2am on August 11. They live next door. “It really scared us,” Raisa recalls. “We are now being attacked every day, several times a day.” They too are concerned about the proximity of the nuclear power plant. “This could be a second Chernobyl,” says Raisa, referring to the northern Ukrainian city that was the scene of the biggest nuclear disaster in history in 1986, when it was still part of the USSR.
The mayor of Energodar before the Russian occupation is confident that the counteroffensive of the Ukrainian army will be successful and the power plant will be recaptured. His name is Dmitro Orlov, he is 37, now lives in Zaporizhia and holds office in exile. He is speaking to EL PAÍS from a center set up to provide humanitarian aid to the residents of Energodar who fled before the arrival of the Russians. “About 53,000 people used to live there, today there are about 15,000,” he says. “Some went abroad, but most of them are waiting in Ukraine for the liberation of the city to be able to return to their homeland.”
It used to be about 53,000 people [in Energodar]and now it’s about 15,000,”
Dmitro Orlov, Mayor of Energodar
Dmitro Orlov, the mayor of Energodar, during an interview with EL PAÍS. Luis DeVega Hernández
The nuclear power plant produces almost no electricity. All six reactors are operating in minimal mode, known as cold shutdown. The neighboring thermal power plant is also idle. Before the war, Energodar generated half of Ukraine’s nuclear power. “We hope that the counter-offensive will be successful so that the power plant can resume operations, generate much-needed electricity and the city can return to normal life,” Orlov said.
A team of experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has been monitoring the safety of the plant since September last year. The agency’s director-general, Rafael Grossi, warned this week that the power station had lost all external power for the seventh time during the conflict and was therefore reliant on backup diesel generators. “[The] nuclear safety situation in the power plant [is] extremely vulnerable. We must agree to protect [the] plant now; “This situation cannot continue,” he wrote on Twitter.
Oleksii Blinechuk worked at the plant until last summer, when he left for Zaporizhia with his family. He says the Russians hired inexperienced managers to run the nuclear power plant. “These are people who have nothing to do with the energy sector and shouldn’t be there,” he notes. He still keeps in touch with some of his colleagues who remain at the plant.
Oleksii Blinechuk, a former employee at the Zaporizhia plant, says the Russian occupiers are not qualified to run the center.
The Zaporizhia front could be the decisive one of the war, US and UK military intelligence has publicly pointed out. The Ukrainian military in the region and defense analysts agree. “Everyone is watching Bakhmut, but what’s happening here is more important,” Stepan, an officer with the Artey Infantry Battalion, told the newspaper last February.
A breakthrough on the Zaporizhia front would allow Ukrainian troops to advance towards the coast of the Sea of Azov without having to conduct a landing on the Dnipro River, which military experts say is an extremely complex undertaking. Should Kiev liberate the province, it would also regain control of Energodar and the nuclear power plant. The next stage, which would mean a significant victory, would be reaching the city of Melitopol on the Sea of Azov. From there, Ukrainian forces could cut supply lines to Russian troops along the coast towards Kherson, the Black Sea and Crimea.
Should Ukraine’s counter-offensive take place in Zaporizhia, any urban center could be turned into a defensive fortress by Russian troops and fighting could devastate entire cities, as was the case with last year’s counter-offensives in Kherson and Kharkiv provinces. But if the Russians maintain their positions around the nuclear power plant, the danger is not that a village will be razed to the ground, but that millions of people could be affected and only their shadows will remain, as Olga fears. The question is whether the Kremlin would order its troops to withdraw if they were surrounded, or whether Moscow will continue to play the nuclear blackmail card.
credits
Coordination and formatting: Guiomar del Ser and Brenda Valverde
Art direction and design: Fernando Hernández
Layout and programming: Alejandro Gallardo
Follow all international news on Facebook and Twitter or in our weekly newsletter.