A huge crater several meters deep in empty land dotted with wild grass testifies to this week’s shelling at the Pivdennoukrainsk power plant site in southern Ukraine, the latest sign of nuclear danger in the war-torn nation.
Small splinters of gray metal, akin to rocket and missile fragments that litter countless battle-ravaged Ukrainian sites, dot the loamy earth hollowed out by the impact.
A few dozen meters from the gaping hole, doors and windows of a building appeared to have been blown up, which AFP was not allowed to visit during a media visit organized by Ukraine’s atomic energy agency Energoatom.
“That’s where the blast of the blast went,” said Ivan Zhebet, security chief at the Pivdennoukrainsk plant in the southern Mykolaiv region.
Zhebet then pointed in the direction the projectile was coming from.
A compass reading by an AFP journalist showed it was fired from the southeast, an area under Russian control.
On the other side of the crater, another building was less damaged but without most of the windows.
The shell fell just after midnight Monday, just minutes after an air raid warning sounded in nearby Yuzhnourainsk, a city that had been relatively quiet until then.
Local residents told AFP they heard a pop and lightbulbs in their homes flickered on and off, a sign the power supply was struggling to stop.
Others said they saw a flash of light in the sky.
– fear of catastrophe –
All residents polled by AFP feared the nuclear site, which directly provides jobs for 6,000 of the city’s 42,000 residents and indirectly for many more, would be hit.
They also expressed fears that the conflict could trigger a disaster similar to that of the 1986 Chernobyl power plant in northern Ukraine, the world’s worst nuclear disaster to date.
Pivdennoukrainski is the third nuclear site to become involved in a conflict that began with the Russian invasion in February.
At the beginning of the war, there was fighting over Chernobyl, while Europe’s largest nuclear facility – the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant on Russian territory – has become a focus of concern after loud claims were made about the attacks against each other.
The Ukrainian army rejected any idea that the attack on Pivdennoukrainsk could have been accidental.
The missile, “apparently an Iskander, was aimed at the installation,” a Facebook message said Monday.
According to Pierre Grasser, a Paris-based Russian defense expert, it was possible that the cable network, transformers, or air defense systems that Ukrainians and Russians often place near strategic locations were under attack.
“The Iskander’s ballistic missile system is quite accurate — on the order of 20 meters,” Grasser told AFP.
– ‘scary’ –
Monday’s attack was not the first close encounter at the Pivdennoukrainsk plant since February.
Shortly after the invasion, as Russian forces attempted to break through at Mykolayiv and reach the strategic Black Sea port of Odessa, they advanced as far as Voznesensk, just 25 kilometers (15 miles) from the nuclear facility.
Several buildings in Yuzhnourainsk were hit by shells while the Ukrainian army destroyed the main bridge to hamper the Russian advance.
“They wanted to take Odessa, they wanted to take our plant. But our guys prevented them from doing so,” said Nataliya Stoikova, department head at Pivdennoukrainsk, proudly.
But she was “shocked” by Monday’s bombing, she added.
“The danger is really scary. If something happened (in Pivdennoukrainsk) or Zaporizhia, the accident in Chernobyl would be almost small in comparison”.
