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Was Zaporizhzhia's grid cut a turning point?
Summary
A look back at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant's disconnection and reconnection, and the violence around it in late August 2022.
What happened at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in the days before 26 August 2022? The Russian-occupied plant had been fully cut off from Ukraine's power grid on 25 August, after shelling nearby caused several fires. Ukraine said so at the time, and a local official said the plant's security systems were activated shortly after the power failure.
On 26 August 2022, Ukraine's state nuclear company, Energoatom, said the plant had resumed supplying electricity to the grid. It described the disconnection of 25 August as the first in the plant's history.
Violence in the occupied south
The same day, a deputy chief of traffic police was killed by a bombing in the Russian-occupied city of Berdiansk, in Zaporizhzhia Oblast. Russian authorities blamed Ukrainian forces for the attack. Two days earlier, on 24 August, the Russian-appointed head of Mykhailivka, also in Zaporizhzhia Oblast, Ivan Sushko, had been assassinated in a car bombing.
The wider picture
On 24 August, Ukraine's Independence Day, a Russian rocket attack on a passenger train at Chaplyne, in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, killed at least 25 people and injured more than 50, according to reports at the time. That day the United States also announced a security package of nearly $3 billion from the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative.
Inside Russia, police arrested Kremlin critic Yevgeny Roizman, the former mayor of Yekaterinburg, on 24 August for "discrediting the Russian army" by criticising the invasion.
Taken together, these reports show a southern front where a power plant, occupation officials and civilians were all caught up in the fighting, and where a brief loss of grid connection drew attention to the plant's vulnerability.
