Satellite pictures show the aftermath of a bridge explosion

The Zaporizhhia Nuclear Power Plant and the Russian-controlled Republic of Ukraine: a High-Energy Infrastructure Project to Rebuild Russia’s Nuclear Infrastructure

“The resumption of shelling, hitting the plant’s sole source of external power, is tremendously irresponsible. The Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant must be protected,” Grossi said on Saturday.

The International Atomic Energy Agency Director General said that the resumed shelling was irresponsible.

“Now the nuclear power plant has been switched back to the emergency mode of operation. The territory controlled by the Ukrainian President was connected to the last power line. Zelensky’s regime, has been cut. Rogov said that the nuclear power plant only has diesel generators for power, and that it is an ” unusual way” to power it.

The risk of storming the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant is still high, according to Rogov, who said thatUkrainians have concentrated significant number of militants in Zaporizhzhia direction.

Vladimir Rogov is a senior pro-Russian official in the regional Zaporizhzhia government and he said that the plant can be put back into operation.

The senior official said that crews restored power and connection in the city, which is located near the Russian-operated Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.

Rogov, a leader in the Zaporizhzhia government, said in a telegram post that water supply will be restored soon.

Orlov said “the Ukrainian authorities have repeatedly tried to deliver humanitarian supplies with food, hygiene products and so on to the city,” adding that Ukraine is “ready to organize prompt delivery and distribution of drinking water in Enerhodar” but that Russian forces have not let humanitarian aid through.

President Zelensky told the international community how much money he needed to rebuild and keep the economy afloat. The board of governors of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund were given that figure. Mr. Zelensky said $17 billion would be required to rebuild schools, hospitals, transport systems and housing, $2 billion of which would be used to export to Europe and restoreUkraine’s energy infrastructure.

In the days after the bridge explosion, Putin said that acts of terrorism on the territory of Russia will be harsh.

The images captured hundreds of cargo trucks backed up and waiting to cross from Crimea into Russia by ferry, some five days after the bombing. The images, captured on Wednesday by Maxar Technologies, show a big backup at the port in Kerch and a line of trucks miles away at an airport that is apparently being used as a staging area.

The long lines for the ferry crossing were worsened by security checks after the bridge explosion, said an analyst from the International Crisis Group.

Russian withdrawal of the Dnipro River from Kherson in the southern reaches of the Donetsk regional capital. The biggest triumph of the Russian war effort for Ukraine

The retreat represents a major blow for Putin’s war effort in Ukraine. Kherson was the only Ukrainian capital that Russian forces had captured.

Russia announced Friday that it had withdrawn from the west bank of the Dnipro River in the strategic southern region of Kherson, leaving the regional capital of the same name and surrounding areas to the Ukrainians.

The Ukrainian military said Sunday the Russians were still conducting assaults in the Bakhmut, Avdiivka and Novopavlikvka areas, all in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region. The AFU said that there are also other areas getting hit.

U.S. intelligence agencies say that if the fall weather remains mild, we can expect a lot of retaking of territories in the south and east lost to Russia in the war. But the agencies cautioned against expecting outright Russian defeat, or even the kind of headlong retreat seen last month in the Kharkiv region in the east.

There were conflicting stories about the status of the town of enerhodar in regards to the Russian occupation on the east bank of Dnipro. Ukrainian officials said that Russian forces were leaving, but The Times could not confirm that, nor was it clear whether such a departure would indicate withdrawal or simply a routine rotation of troops.

While state media in Russia said that Ukrainian shelling had damaged the power lines, Yaroslav Yanushevych, the exiled Ukrainian head of the Kherson regional military administration, blamed Russian troops.

The Russian forces have also placed mines around water towers in Beryslav, Mr. Yanushevych said, referring to a town less than 50 miles from Kherson city and just north of a critical dam near the front lines of the fighting.

Last month, the occupation authorities ordered the evacuation of civilians from the west side of the river. They sent a lot of them eastward to Russia, where they were confronted with restrictions on routes into Ukranian-controlled areas. The government installed by Moscow also departed, while looting the city, according to residents and Ukrainian officials.

Some 250,000 people lived in the city before the war. Ukrainian activists estimate that 30,000 to 60,000 people remain, but it is impossible to know how accurate such guesses are.

It was the biggest triumph of the early days of the war for the Russian forces to cross the Antonivsky Bridge and get into Kherson city. Mr. Putin hoped to use the wider Kherson region as a bridgehead for a drive farther west, to the port city of Odesa, but that effort failed.

The Battle for Kherson: Interactions between Russia and the Ukraine Regime at the Heart of the Dnipro River

The town does not have a water supply. There is a shortage of medicines because there is a lack of electricity. There are also problems with food supplies,” Roman Golovnya, adviser to the mayor of Kherson, said in a TV broadcast Saturday.

Russian forces are just across the Dnipro River from the city, and residents are warned to be careful because of explosives left in the area.

CNN commentator Nic Robertson reported on Saturday that the battle against Russia was not over as residents in Kherson celebrated their liberation.

He said that the city is now a front line city. In the early hours of this morning there were outgoing fire towards the Russian forces.

On Saturday, Ukraine’s National Police warned “the main threat at the moment is mass mining,” with a police representative injured while demining one of the city’s administrative buildings.

Almost 2,000 “explosive items,” such as mines, trip wires, and unexploded ammunition, have already been removed from the Kherson region, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned during his nightly address Saturday. He warned Kherson residents not to try to inspect the buildings and objects left by occupiers.

The bomb disposal experts, the police, and the defense forces are all working in Kherson.

Infrastructure has taken an unwelcome hit: Zelensky said that “before fleeing from Kherson, the occupiers destroyed all critical infrastructure – communication, water supply, heat, electricity.”

The team at CNN reports on weather conditions in Kherson city, which has sub-zero temperatures at night and no heating. Ukrainian authorities have said that those who find it too hard to live in Kherson can move to other parts of the country, since they do now have freedom of movement.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/13/europe/ukraine-kherson-food-shortages-mines-intl/index.html

Water flowing out of the Dnipro river: an operational update from the Armenian Army of Ukraine (AFU) Embedded in Kherson

CNN obtained satellite imagery from Maxar Technologies showing water flowing out of three gates at the dam where a major hydropower project is located.

Speaking Saturday on the next steps for the Ukrainian military in Kherson, CNN military analyst Cedric Leighton said: “This is going to be a major urban operation. There will be an operation to clear buildings of potential booby traps and mines.

The Ukrainians need to move their systems to the east so they can counter any possible Russian attack on the eastern side of the Dnipro River.

Russian troops are focusing their efforts in the Kherson region on equipping their defensive lines on the eastern bank of the Dnipro River, an operational update from the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) General Staff said Sunday night.

Their withdrawal east across the Dnipro cedes large swathes of land that Russia has occupied since the early days of the war, and that Putin had formally declared as Russian territory just five weeks ago.

Russia has been unleashing large-scale strikes on Ukraine’s power systems since Oct. 10 in an effort to cut off power to civilians as the country heads into winter.

One of the capital’s infrastructure facilities has been hit according to the mayor. He said running water has been cut off due to shelling throughout the city, and a 17-year-old girl was among those killed.

Klitschko also said 21 of the 31 missiles targeted at Kyiv were shot down. This could not be independently verified, but the Ukrainians say they’ve been shooting down roughly two-thirds to three-quarters of the incoming Russian missiles.

Russia tries to punishUkraine for daring to be free by hitting it with cruel missile strikes, said the US ambassador to Ukraine. “Russia’s attempt to dominate Ukraine by plunging it into the cold and dark will fail.”

The impact of power cuts on water and heat in Ukraine and the country’s nuclear reactors: a warning warning against Russian attacks on Ukrainian civilians

The nuclear reactors have been turned on again, but are still not connected to the national grid, the company said.

In the west of the country, one regional administrator, Serhii Hamalii, said on Telegram that most of the surrounding area was without power and water due to the Russian attacks. Khmelnytskyi was offline due to this.

In the southern region of Mykolaiv, the military administrator, Vitaliy Kim, also said the nuclear plant in his area has been cut from the grid, leading to a risky shutdown of the reactors there.

The cascading effect of power cuts on water and heat is stressed by Ukrainian officials. There is a possibility that the water in the pipes could freeze if it is cold.

In Moldova, President Maia Sandu wrote this about Russia on Facebook: “We can’t trust a regime that leaves us in the dark and cold, that purposely kills people for the mere desire to keep other peoples poor and humble.”

Preparing for the winter is a lot of work for Ukraine. In a Tuesday night video address, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said there are now 4,000 centers to take care of civilians if there are extended power cuts.

Putin’s comments on energy infrastructure attacks on Ukraine echoed by his appearance on the Kerch Bridge in Moscow and his speech at the Kremlin

He called them “points of invincibility,” saying they will provide heat, water, phone charging and internet access. Many will be in schools and government buildings.

The Russian president made rare public comments on the military’s attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, while clutching a glass of champagne at a Kremlin reception.

He blamed the Ukrainians for a number of the events he said happened on the bridge. The power lines from the nuclear power plant were blown up.

Last week Putin appeared on the Kerch Bridge, where he was shown repairs and drove a car across the structure that he himself officially opened in 2018.

He continued to say in his appearance Thursday in the Kremlin that who isn’t giving water to Donetsk? Not supplying water to a million person city is an act of genocide.

The Russian president tersely compared the difference in reactions to attacks on Russia and attacks on Ukraine, saying, “as soon as we make a move, do something in response – noise, clamor, crackle for the whole universe.”

He concluded the speech by adding that “it won’t interfere with our combat missions,” before raising a toast to the listening soldiers and sipping from his champagne glass.

It said the damage was compounded by freezing and the break of wires in the distribution networks, with the pace of restoration slowed down.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/09/europe/putin-ukrainian-infrastructure-strikes-intl/index.html

Ukraine is draining a massive reservoir endangering a nuclear plant, or why it would be dangerous to invade Ukraine, according to the prosecutor-general

A top Ukrainian official said the attacks on the country’s energy grid amount to genocide. The prosecutor-general made a comment while speaking to thebbc last month.

David Helms is a retired meteorologist with decades of experience working for the U.S. federal government, most recently at the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. He says there’s 23 reservoirs, they are topped off.

The Kakhovka Reservoir is a massive, man-made lake roughly the size of the Great Salt Lake in Utah. There is another body of water along the Dnipro River. It has been used to provide water to the southern districts of Ukraine since the 1950s. The canal that leads from the reservoir supplies Russian-occupied Crimea.

“Even though the decreased water level does not pose an immediate threat to nuclear safety and security, it may become a source of concern if it is allowed to continue,” the IAEA’s director General Rafael M. Grossi said in a statement.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/02/10/1155761686/russia-is-draining-a-massive-ukrainian-reservoir-endangering-a-nuclear-plant

The Reservoir in the Southern Region of Ukraine: Why Russia doesn’t want to invade it? Brian Kuns, a geographer, has studied farming in Ukraine

The reservoir is essential to supplying water to otherwise arid farmland in the southern part of the country, according to Brian Kuns, a geographer at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences who has studied farming in southern Ukraine. Approximately 200,000 hectares of farmland can be cultivated using a network of canals leading from the depths of the water. “It’s important in this area,” Kuns says.

According to Helms, the blast seems to have destroyed the road, but left the dam’s sluice gates mostly intact.

Immediately after the detonation, it was reported that Russian forces opened additional sluice gates to let water out of the dam.

The result has astounded me. Radar altimetry data shows the current level of the reservoir at 14 meters, approximately 2 meters below its normal height. Since December, the water level at the reservoir has fallen to its lowest level in 30 years of satellite observation.

The statement issued by the regional military administration warns that several cities will face water shortages if the Russian occupation continues, as well as that all of them are currently under Russian rule.

But Kuns isn’t sure of Russia’s intentions. He says most of the affected areas are in Russia. He says it seems odd that they would be doing a scorched earth on territory that they claim to want to keep.

For now, there’s little to be done except watch the water as it drains away. “I don’t know what the purpose of it is,” says Kuns. “But it is very worrying.”