The Bear and the Atom

Moscow loaded Ukraine up with nuclear power plants before the breakaway nation gained its freedom in 1989. These tended to be huge and somewhat risky, most famously the plant at Chernobyl in Ukraine's north, the site of a melt-down in 1987, before the Soviet Union itself melted down. Chernobyl's was the only nuclear accident known to have killed people, about 30 in the immediate blast and up to 16,000 in Europe alone over the decades since.

Chernobyl is close to the Belarus border and was one of the first conquests of the Russian army in its invasion of the Ukraine heartland. That was frightening enough (the "exclusion zone" has since been recovered) but Russian forces have since developed the habit of shelling and otherwise endangering nuclear power plants, most recently at Zaporizhzhia in the south. Like Chernobyl it is a typical Soviet enterprise: a sprawl of six nuclear reactors and a thermal plant, one of the largest in the world, accompanied by a purpose-built city. The Russians captured it in March and have since built it into a military garrison from which they shell Ukrainian targets, daring them to respond in kind and accusing them of doing just that. (Above: a Russian soldier in front of Reactor Number One, which apparently is being used to store ammunition.)

It's a "ticking time bomb," according to an article in the English-language Kyiv Independent. "Repeated Russian shelling from within the plant’s territory, causing one of the reactors to shut down, has put the entire complex’s safety at stake."

Rafael Mariano Grossi, the head of the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency, called for an immediate end to all military action near the site, saying there is a “very real risk of a nuclear disaster.”

Typical of Moscow's exploitation of its victims, Russia may hope to connect the plant to the Crimean grid and steal its output, which accounts for a fifth of Ukraine's electric supply.