Work has started to repair damaged power lines at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in Ukraine, the UN’s nuclear watchdog said on Saturday. The plant, which has been occupied by Russian forces since March 2022, lost its connection to the grid on 23 September for the 10th time, marking the longest external power supply outage since Russia’s invasion began.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said that both Russian and Ukrainian forces established “local ceasefire zones” to allow the repairs to proceed safely. IAEA head Rafael Grossi said the two sides “engaged constructively” with the agency to enable the complex repair plan, which is expected to take about a week. Since the outage, Europe’s largest nuclear plant has been reliant on backup diesel generators to power its cooling and safety systems.
In other developments, Russia launched three missiles and 164 drones overnight, Ukraine’s air force reported. Ukrainian forces shot down 136 drones, but two people were injured in a drone strike on a petrol station in Sumy. Russia claimed its air defences destroyed 41 Ukrainian drones overnight.
Meanwhile, Ukrainians expressed disappointment after President Volodymyr Zelenskyy failed to secure long-range Tomahawk missiles from the US during a meeting with President Donald Trump. A Ukrainian soldier, Roman Vynnychenko, said he believes the prospect was a political “game”, adding that Ukraine still needs new weapons to counter Russian attacks on civilian infrastructure. Psychologist Victoria Khramtsova said, “We just want peace.”
Exiled Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya warned Trump that Vladimir Putin is not serious about negotiations over Ukraine. She told AFP that “dictators don’t need peace” and urged the US to support democracy in Belarus, stating that a free Belarus is in US interests.
