Russian Shelling Knocks Out Power at Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power ... - The New York Times

Russian Shelling Knocks Out Power at Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant: Live Updates - The New York Times
The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant lost power early Monday morning, according to Energoatom, Ukraine’s state nuclear power company.Credit...Andrey Borodulin/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Russian shelling again knocked out power to the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, which had switched to backup diesel generators to keep critical cooling equipment running, Ukrainian nuclear officials said on Monday.

The loss of power raised the threat of a nuclear disaster at the plant, which is occupied by Russian troops and operated by Ukrainian engineers. The generators have enough diesel to power the plant for 10 days.

“After the loss of external power, which is vitally necessary to ensure the operation of the pumps for cooling the nuclear material of the power units, all diesel generators of the nuclear power plant were switched on automatically,” Energoatom, Ukraine’s state nuclear power company, said on the Telegram messaging app.

Rafael Mariano Grossi, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, confirmed the outage and called the situation at the plant “extremely vulnerable.” He said it was the seventh time since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022 that the plant had lost its connection to external electricity.

#Ukraine’s #ZNPP this morning lost all external electricity for 7th time during conflict, forcing it to rely on emergency diesel generators for power; nuclear safety situation at the plant extremely vulnerable. We must agree to protect plant now; this situation cannot continue.

In each previous incident, engineers have been able to restore power to the plant before the generators ran out of diesel, averting a possible catastrophe.

The latest blackout at the plant, which is near the front line in the partially occupied Zaporizhzhia region in southern Ukraine, started at about 5:30 a.m. on Monday, Energoatom said. The facility lost its connection to a high-voltage power line from the nearby town of Dniprovska, the company said.

As Ukrainian forces prepare to begin an anticipated counteroffensive that could include southern Ukraine, shelling in Zaporizhzhia has increased. Fighting in the surrounding area increases the risks to the plant, according to Mr. Grossi, who has been trying to win international backing for a demilitarized zone around the plant.
Soldiers during a night operation near Bakhmut on Tuesday.Credit...Tyler Hicks/The New York Times

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine grabbed the spotlight at the Group of 7 summit in Japan and won even more pledges for military aid, including training for Ukraine’s pilots on F-16 fighter jets. But at home this week he faces questions about the future of the eastern city of Bakhmut, the deadliest battle of the war.

Russia over the weekend claimed that it has captured Bakhmut, and if confirmed the outcome would be a powerful symbolic success for Moscow. It would represent the first Ukrainian city it has seized since Lysychansk last summer, and be a setback for Kyiv.

With Bakhmut mostly in ruins, the bigger question appears to be what happens next. Ukraine and Russia have been in a nearly yearlong battle over the now destroyed city, and there are signs that an end to that fight could bring some significant shifts to the battlefield.

Ukraine, which insists Bakhmut has not completely fallen, sees an opening to seize the initiative from the city’s outskirts.

Fresh from a weekend tour to meet with members of the Arab League and appearance at the G7 gathering in Hiroshima, Mr. Zelensky was confident that his outreach had helped Ukraine. “The world hears our position,” he said Sunday while he was aboard an airplane. It was not immediately clear when he was heading back to Ukraine.

Here are other possible developments we are keeping an eye on this week:
Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin is scheduled to be in China on Tuesday and Wednesday for an official visit. The two sides will have “an in-depth exchange of views on bilateral relations, practical cooperation and issues of mutual interest,” according to China’s Foreign Ministry. The two countries have maintained close ties even as Beijing has cast itself as a neutral party in the war and criticized the United States and Europe for providing arms to Ukraine. President Biden, who initially fought sending fighter jets to Ukraine for fear of escalating the conflict, has cleared the way for Ukrainian pilots to be trained on American-made F-16s and has said he is prepared to approve other countries’ transfers of the jets to Ukraine. It wasn’t clear exactly how or when that all would happen. A soldier in the 28th Mechanized Brigade of the Ukrainian Army in eastern Ukraine this month.Credit...Tyler Hicks/The New York Times

Russia’s claim of victory in the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut suggests that the brutal urban combat that marked the deadliest battle of its war in Ukraine might be over. But what comes next is far from clear.

While Moscow is trumpeting a “Mission Accomplished” moment in its war, Ukraine — even as it insists Bakhmut has not completely fallen — sees an opening to seize the initiative from the city’s outskirts if Russian forces are no longer pressing forward inside the city’s center.

Russia’s capture of Bakhmut would be a powerful symbolic success for Moscow. It would represent the first Ukrainian city it has seized since Lysychansk last summer, and be a setback for Kyiv, which expended precious ammunition and sent some of its most capable forces to try to thwart Russia’s devastating monthslong assault on the city. Thousands of troops from both sides are believed to have been killed in nearly a year of intense fighting there.

But the city is now in ruins, and controlling it would not necessarily help Moscow toward its larger stated goal — conquering the entire eastern region of Donbas — now that Ukrainian troops have worn out Russian forces and broken through their defenses in some areas to the city’s north and south.

Now that Russia has seemingly taken the city, it must hold it.

Ukraine, however, plans to make that proposition difficult by raining artillery on Russian forces occupying Bakhmut, according to Ukrainian officials. Military analysts say that if Moscow continues to send reinforcements to defend the city, that could weaken Russian forces’ ability to hold off a broader counteroffensive that Ukraine says it is about to begin.
Family members of Oleksandr Shargorodskyi, a Ukrainian serviceman who was killed in Bakhmut, during his funeral in Trebukhiv, Ukraine, on Sunday.Credit...Nicole Tung for The New York Times

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An honor guard carried the coffin of Sergeant Shargorodskyi.Credit...Nicole Tung for The New York Times

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People kneel as the hearse passes during Sergeant Shargorodskyi’s funeral.Credit...Nicole Tung for The New York Times

The hearse carrying the body of Sgt. Oleksandr Shargorodskyi wound through the village streets of Trebukhiv, Ukraine, on Sunday. Residents, fellow soldiers, and friends knelt and bowed their heads in honor of the 29-year-old Ukrainian service member who died on May 7 in Bakhmut.

Behind the hearse was a trail of mourners, and inside was his wife, Iryna Shargorodska, who fixed her eyes on his coffin, in shock, while she held her two children, 6-year-old Sonia and 4-year-old Tymofii.

The men of Sergeant Shargorodskyi’s unit carried his portrait and the flags of the Azov Regiment, of which he was a commander of the 3rd Separate Assault Brigade.

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Ukrainian soldiers comforted Iryna Shargorodska and her daughter, Sonia, following her husband’s funeral.Credit...Nicole Tung for The New York Times

Sergeant Shargorodskyi had fought in Bakhmut since late last year. He was part of the assault unit that recently retook an area outside of Bakhmut from Russian forces. Heand his men were working on their next operation when he stepped on one of the thousands of mines hidden in the earth of war-ravaged eastern Ukraine.

Members of his unit rushed to evacuate him from the battlefield, but his wounds were too severe.

At the cemetery, surrounded by soldiers, his family embraced his coffin as his two children looked on. Sonia wailed “Baba” — daddy — while clutching her grief-stricken mother.

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Family and friends at a restaurant after the funeral, where they prayed and spoke about Sergeant Shargorodskyi’s life. International Criminal Court prosecutor Karim Khan in February at a Kyiv residential building that was damaged by a Russian missile strike. Khan is one of four representatives of the I.C.C. charged by Russia.Credit...Valentyn Ogirenko/Reuters

Two months after the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, the Russian authorities retaliated by bringing their own cases against officials for the Netherlands-based court, the Russian Investigative Committee said in a statement on Sunday.

Citing the war crimes cases against Mr. Putin and another Russian official, the committee said it had charged an I.C.C. prosecutor and three judges in absentia.

The prosecutor, Karim Khan, was charged under a law forbidding “criminal prosecution of a person known to be innocent,” according to Tass, a Russian state news agency. He and the judges — Tomoko Akane, Rosario Salvatore Aitala and Sergio Gerardo Ugalde Godinez — were also accused of preparing an attack on a representative of a foreign state “to complicate international relations.”

Tass reported on Friday that the four officials had been put on a wanted list. On Saturday, the I.C.C. said in a statement that it was “profoundly concerned about unwarranted and unjustified coercive measures reportedly taken against I.C.C. officials.”

“The court will remain undeterred in the conduct of its lawful mandate to ensure accountability for the gravest crimes of concern to the international community as a whole,” the court said. It did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment on Sunday.

The I.C.C. issued its arrest warrant for Mr. Putin in March, accusing him and Maria Lvova-Belova, Russia’s commissioner for children’s rights, of war crimes for their role in the abduction and deportation of Ukrainian children since Russia’s full-scale invasion began in February last year. The effort was not merely symbolic, but the court cannot try defendants in absentia and Russia has said it will not surrender its own officials.

Still, the arrest warrant could limit Mr. Putin’s movements outside of Russia, further isolating him from the West. Russia has dismissed the warrants as “meaningless.”
The 28th Mechanized Brigade of the Ukrainian Army firing on Russian positions near Bakhmut this month.Credit...Tyler Hicks/The New York Times

Ukraine retains control of a small part of Bakhmut and has made advances on its outskirts, the commander of Kyiv’s ground forces, Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky, said on Sunday, part of a drumbeat of statements from Ukrainian officials disputing Russia’s claim that its forces had seized the eastern city.

“Despite the fact that we now control a small part of Bakhmut, the importance of its defense does not lose its relevance,” General Syrsky said in comments reported on the Telegram messaging app by Ukraine’s General Staff.

Ukrainian forces, he added, had continued to make advances on Bakhmut’s flanks and were “close to tactically encircling the city.”

It was not possible to independently verify either Ukrainian or Russian claims about the status of Bakhmut, site of the deadliest battle since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine 15 months ago. But after Russia’s Defense Ministry said that it had fully captured the city, Ukrainian officials — including President Volodymyr Zelensky at the Group of 7 summit in Japan — insisted on Sunday that the battle was not over.

Ukraine’s deputy defense minister, Hanna Maliar, claimed that the country’s forces control a southwestern district of the city known as Litak, or “airplane,” which is close to a road used for resupply that runs to the town of Chasiv Yar.

Ukrainian military officials also claimed further advances north and south of the city. On some days last week, Ukrainian forces advanced between 250 yards and around one mile to the north and south of the city, Serhiy Cherevatyi, a spokesman for Ukrainian forces fighting in the east, said on national television.

General Syrsky said the Ukrainian advance outside of Bakhmut “deprives the enemy of control over the approaches to the city and gives us certain tactical advantages.”
An image taken from video released by the press service of Wagner founder Yevgeny V. Prigozhin purports to show him with his fighters in Bakhmut, Ukraine, on Saturday.Credit...Prigozhin Press Service, via Associated Press

Russia’s state media celebrated the purported capture of Bakhmut on Sunday, but a key leader of its monthslong assault against the city in eastern Ukraine was struggling to get credit.

A segment on a leading morning newscast on Sunday compared the battle for Bakhmut to the Soviet Union’s major victories in World War II. A Russian fighter was shown saying he felt “probably the same emotions as our grandpas did in Berlin.” The anchor declared: “Mission accomplished.”

But even as the newscast, on state-run Channel 1, featured Bakhmut as its top story, one man went unmentioned: Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, the founder of the Wagner mercenary force that lost thousands of fighters during months of frontal assaults on the city, and a vocal critic of Russia’s military leadership.

While Ukraine’s military insists Bakhmut has not been lost, the Channel 1 newscast cited the statements late Saturday by President Vladimir V. Putin and the Russian Defense Ministry that both gave Wagner partial credit for capturing the city. Channel 1 also featured footage of armed men described as Wagner fighters yelling “Bakhmut is ours!”

But the newscast did not show or mention Mr. Prigozhin, who was first to proclaim Bakhmut’s purported capture on Saturday in a video. In his announcement, Mr. Prigozhin stood against the backdrop of the ruined city and excoriated Russia’s top general and Russia’s defense minister for “turning the war into their personal entertainment.”

As the battle for Bakhmut dragged on and casualties on both sides mounted this year, Mr. Prigozhin frequently lashed out at the Russian military elite, claiming that they failed to provide his fighters with enough ammunition and failed to ensure that regular Russian troops stood their ground when attacked on Wagner’s flanks. In his announcement on Saturday, Mr. Prigozhin predicted that his criticism would not be shown on television.

“Two realities exist in our country,” Mr. Prigozhin said Saturday. “One is real, the other one is for television.”

In fact, Russian officials earlier this year were already directing state television talking heads not to “excessively promote” Mr. Prigozhin, The New York Times reported in February.

For nearly a year, Russian forces have pressed in on Bakhmut while at the same time laying waste — block by bloody block — to what had once been a vibrant salt-mining city of 70,000 people.

Sunday morning’s newscast showed extensive aerial footage of the destruction and desolation in Bakhmut but claimed that it was Ukrainian forces that had destroyed their own city — an echo of Russia’s false narrative when it captured the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol a year ago.

“They weren’t able to hold on to the city,” a reporter on the ground in Bakhmut said, referring to Ukrainian forces. “So they are trying to raze it to the ground.”