After the panic of the first few months, people are not ready to give up on the defense of their cities. Such fatalism is typical in Ukraine today. Still, she did not want to abandon Zaporizhzhya. “I went out with my little daughter instead of sitting at home with all windows and doors shut, and now both of us suffer from thyroid health issues.” “Four days after the reactor blew up in Chernobyl, in 1986, Soviet authorities made us march at the May 1 parade,” she told me. She had lived through the Chernobyl disaster.

Vaselyuk has experience of a nuclear catastrophe. We have no place to hide from them, no proper shelters with stored water, food, or medicine.” “Here, in Zaporizhzhya, we are the ground zero, but we are not ready for nuclear bombs. “‘God, let it not be nuclear,’ I prayed,” she said. Could Putin order the plant itself blown up, or a strike against Zaporizhzhya with a nuclear weapon, as he has threatened to do more broadly against Ukraine? Vaselyuk was convinced that he might, after every other unimaginable thing that had happened-including the full-scale invasion, the mass graves, the indiscriminate bombardment of civilian areas.Įric Schlosser: What if Russia uses nuclear weapons in Ukraine The Zaporizhzhya nuclear-power plant had recently lost its external electrical power supply and was relying on diesel generators to maintain safe operation and manageable temperatures in the reactor core. She knew there were a couple of strategic targets, potential objectives for a Russian attack, in the region. The closest shelter was more than six miles from her house.

“The inhuman monsters,” Vaselyuk exclaimed, when she told me about the attack later. The war’s front line is barely 20 miles away, and the nuclear-power plant that shares the city’s name is only a 70-mile drive around the Kakhovka Reservoir, in Russian-occupied territory. The city, which lies on the eastern bank of the Dnipro River, is in Ukrainian-held territory in the country’s southeast. That was one of dozens of missiles Russia fired at Zaporizhzhya this week, destroying dozens of apartment buildings, historical streets, and important infrastructure. She had just put on her slippers when, as she sat on her bed, a major missile struck her city, shaking her entire house. Some sixth sense awoke 66-year-old Svitlana Vaselyuk on Tuesday at 5:45 a.m.

Diesel only the brave diesel