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Unbowed Western powers pledged to supply Ukraine with more potent air defence systems following a furious barrage of retaliatory Russian missile strikes, including one that temporarily knocked Europe’s biggest nuclear plant off the invaded country’s electrical grid on Wednesday.
The Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant suffered a blackout when a missile damaged a distant electrical substation, Ukraine’s state nuclear operator said.
The power loss increased the risk of a radiation emergency because the plant needs electricity to prevent its reactors from overheating.
Energoatom said the external power source was repaired after about eight hours and that the plant’s emergency diesel generators which rely on uncertain fuel deliveries in the war zone provided backup in the meantime, but a similarly hazardous interruption could happen at any time.
Russia has seized the plant and is not taking any steps to deescalate. On the contrary, it is shelling important infrastructure daily, the company’s press service told The Associated Press.
Hundreds of cities and towns across Ukraine lost electricity after Russia launched a wide-ranging missile assault Monday in retaliation for a truck bomb explosion that damaged a bridge linking Russia with the Crimean Peninsula, which it annexed in 2014.
With repairs to the grid still in progress, Ukraine’s prime minister asked people to reduce evening energy consumption by 25 per cent and prepare for winter by keeping essentials such as warm clothes, candles, flashlights and batteries ready.
As the barrage that killed dozens of Ukrainians this week continued, Ukraine’s Western allies met at NATO headquarters in Brussels to calibrate their response.
US Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Ukraine wants its Western partners to provide it with a complete air defence system to contend with Russian warplanes and missiles.
Milley spoke to reporters after a meeting of the Ukraine Defence Contact Group, about 50 nations that meet regularly to assess Kyiv’s needs and drum up equipment.
What Ukraine is asking for, and what we think can be provided, is an integrated air missile defense system. So that doesn’t control all the airspace over Ukraine, but they’re designed to control priority targets that Ukraine needs to protect, Milley told reporters.
Andriy Yermak, the head of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s office, said the meeting was historic because decisions to close the sky for Ukraine were being made there.
