Move ends month-long reliance on backup generators after power line was cut in September
Russian engineers have reconnected the occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant to external electrical power from Ukraine, ending a month-long emergency that had plunged the future of the six-reactor site into doubt.
Ukrainian sources told the Guardian that Russian technicians had hoped to connect Europe’s biggest nuclear plant – which had been relying on backup generators since its last external power line was cut in September – to power from the Russian grid on 7 October as a birthday present for Vladimir Putin.
But the effort was foiled by Ukrainian partisans, who attacked substations behind the lines in the occupied Zaporizhzhia region, damaging a newly completed high-voltage connection that ran from the plant to Mariupol and the Russian grid.
As a result, the sources said, Russia had little choice but to repair a 750-kilovolt line that runs from the plant – controlled by Russia since March 2022 – across the Dnipro River and the frontlines into Ukrainian-held territory to restore the supply of external electricity.
