Small bits of gray metal, similar to the bits of rockets and missiles littering the countless war-ravaged Ukrainian sites, dot the loamy earth carved out by the impact.
A few dozen meters from the crater, a low building, where AFP could not enter during a press visit organized by the Ukrainian operator Energoatom, seems to have had its doors and windows torn off.
“That’s where the blast of the explosion went,” said Ivan Gebet, the plant’s security manager.
According to his explanations, the projectile crashed in the direction of the nuclear installation. A compass shows that he would have left from the South-East, that is to say territories under Russian control.
On the other side of the hole, another building, less damaged, also lost most of its windows.
The impact occurred around 12:20 a.m. Monday, a few minutes after an air alert sounded in all the telephones in the city, which had been spared from the bombardments until then.
The residents of Yuzhnoukrainsk interviewed by AFP recount a more or less loud rumbling, depending on the proximity of their accommodation to the power plant, flickering light bulbs at home, a sign that the power supply was disrupted, or even a bright light in the sky.
– “nuclear blackmail” –
All felt the same anguish: that the nuclear site, which supports the 42,000 souls of the city, of which 6,000 work there directly, has been affected.
A repetition, this time caused by war, of the Chernobyl accident, the worst nuclear disaster in history which took place in northern Ukraine in 1986 and still marks everyone’s minds in this country.
Moscow reinforces its “nuclear blackmail” against kyiv with this bombardment, storms Igor Polovitch, the director of the Pivdennoukrainsk power plant, whose three reactors built in the 1980s now provide 15% of the country’s energy.
While the site of another Ukrainian atomic installation, that of Zaporijjia (south), has already been bombed several times in recent months, Russia and Ukraine rejecting responsibility for the strikes, Russian troops have begun “the second phase” of their nuclear intimidation, he accuses.
The Ukrainian military, in a post on Facebook on Monday, dismisses any idea of an accidentally dropped projectile. The missile, “presumably an Iskander, was aimed at the facility,” she insists.
Contacted by AFP, the specialist in Russian defense issues Pierre Grasser, associate researcher at the Sirice-Sorbonne laboratory, is inclined to validate this thesis.
“The ballistic missile of the Iskander system is quite precise, of the order of 20 meters, he says. It is to be considered since it was not the power station which was targeted, but networks of wiring, transformers, or anti-aircraft systems, which Ukrainians and Russians often place near strategic sites”.
Pivdennoukraïnsk is the third nuclear site to find itself drawn into the war launched by Russia in February, and this despite multiple calls from the international community to spare such infrastructures in order not to cause a catastrophe.
In addition to the Zaporijjia plant, the largest in Europe, now under Russian control, Moscow forces also occupied the Chernobyl plant for several weeks. Closed since 2000, it is located in an area highly contaminated by radioactive waste.
Pivdennoukraïnsk itself has not gone far from disaster. At the start of the war, when the Russians failed to break through the lock of Mykolaiv, which would have allowed them to reach the large port city of Odessa, they had reached Voznessensk, 25 km from the nuclear installation.
In this small town, several buildings riddled with shells and the central bridge, destroyed by the Ukrainian army to hinder their advance, bear witness to the fierceness of the fighting.
“They wanted to take Odessa, they wanted to take our power station. But our guys stopped them,” recalls proudly Natalia Stoikova, head of the international department of Pivdennooukraïnsk, before admitting to being “shocked” by the recent bombardment.
“The danger is really frightening,” she breathes. “If something happened in (Pivdennoukrainsk) or Zaporizhia, the Chernobyl accident would seem almost weak.”
