Kremlin: Russian forces have no plans to flee nuclear plant
KYIV, Ukraine — Following a string of Ukrainian military successes in the south, the Kremlin sought Monday to tamp down speculation that Russian forces would withdraw from the Zaporizhzhia nuclear complex, with President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman saying that Moscow has no plans to end its military occupation of Europe’s largest nuclear power plant.
“One should not look for signs where there are none and cannot be any,” said the spokesman, Dmitri Peskov.
Peskov’s comments came after some pro-Russian military bloggers wrote posts suggesting that Moscow’s forces would withdraw from the area, and after Ukrainian officials said there were indications that Russia was taking steps to leave the facility.
Russian forces seized the Zaporizhzhia plant after invading Ukraine in late February, stationing troops and military equipment there. A withdrawal from would mark another setback for Russian forces in a region that Putin has sought to annex illegally.
On Sunday, Petro Kotin, president of the Ukrainian state nuclear energy company, Energoatom, said that there were signs that Russian troops were “packing and stealing whatever they can find” at the Zaporizhzhia complex, although he emphasized that there was no evidence that the troops had actually begun to pull out.
Ukrainian forces in recent weeks have scored a series of victories in southern Ukraine, including retaking the key city of Kherson on Nov. 11. But military analysts said that there was no immediate indication that they were threatening Russia’s grip on the plant, which lies on the eastern bank of the Dnieper River, about 100 miles northeast of Kherson.
Instead, the reports from Russian military bloggers — a hawkish and pro-invasion group — suggest concerns about Moscow’s ability to hold the plant and could be an attempt to “prepare the information space for an eventual Russian withdrawal” from Zaporizhzhia, the Institute for the Study of War, a research group that tracks the conflict, wrote in its daily analysis Sunday.
The nuclear plant — which provided 20% of Ukraine’s electricity before the war — has careened from one crisis to another since Russian forces seized the facility March 4.
Shelled repeatedly, it has cycled down all of its reactors as a safety measure and has been disconnected from the power grid multiple times, forcing it to use diesel generators to perform critical cooling functions.
The Ukrainian staff members operating the plant, whose numbers have more than halved, have reported being detained and abused by Russian soldiers. Witnesses also have accused the Russian forces of laying mines in and around the plant.
Repeated waves of Russian missile assaults on Ukraine’s energy grid infrastructure have resulted in prolonged and widespread power outages in all regions of the country. Millions now live with sweeping but controlled blackouts for long stretches of the day and night.