With his suggestion that American interests have been occupied by Russian armed forces in the past three years, the eyebrows that American interests could take control of the Ukrainian nuclear power plants with his proposal.
How this works and the likelihood of wrestling the work of Zaporizhzhia out of the hands of Russia are among the many questions raised by Trump’s proposal, which he apparently hovered during a telephone conversation with the week with the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Trump said “American possession” of all Ukraine nuclear power plants “would be the best protection for this infrastructure, according to the White House. Kyiv still checks the other three plants.
Zelenskyy later said reporters that they only discussed Zaporizhzhia – and the possibility that we will support ourselves in restoring the US support in recovery: “The president asked me whether there was an understanding that America could restore it, and I told him if we could modernize it, they invest money.”
According to Melinda Haring, a Ukraine expert and non-resident senior scholarship holder in the Eurasia Center of the Atlantic Council, the scenario of the USA seems to be without precedent without precedent.
“It’s just strange to be honest,” she said to Bloomberg.
The huge nuclear power plant, the largest in Europe, has been occupied by its complete invasion of Ukraine from Russia since the early days and is affected by problems. The six reactors are cold, the system has lost its main supply of cooling water and nobody knows the condition of their equipment.
It seems that all efforts to revive the work would take years – two and a half, according to Zelenskyy – additionally to overcome the hurdles in order to maintain custody for the facility itself.
Despite the experiments, Moscow could not connect the facility to Russia’s network, and it does not generate any energy.
Pressure on Russia
Two unnamed Ukrainian industry sources said Reuters that Trump’s proposal could be an example of the fact that the USA tested various ideas to see what works while Trump is trying to complete a deal to end the war quickly.
In one of the sources it says that the idea also exerts pressure on Russia by proposing an arrangement in which it would have to hand over the system. The Americans have lit the situation through the word “property”, the source said.
Others say that a US presence could prevent Russia from saboting Ukraine’s energy infrastructure or attacking them in any other way.
“Russia cannot play these games,” said Tymofiy Mylovanov, a former minister of the Ukrainian economy, BBC News.
“Russia respects the US power more than that of Ukraine.”
A former high -ranking Ukrainian official said: “Everything is possible with the Americans”, but admitted that the proposal was “quite unusual”.
“The Americans would own it – and what reasons does it belong to Ukraine … Will you buy it? Will you take it as a license? Many questions.”
This is separate from the question of how Russia is persuaded to give up control.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is “still maximum in his demands,” said Maxim Tucker, journalist for the Times newspaper in Great Britain, Times Radio this week.
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“Everything he demands is supposed to undermine Ukraine as a sovereign state.”
Getting the work of Zaporizhzhia again, which the Ukrainians create again, would help the country with his later reconstruction, and in view of the fact that Tucker said he could not agree to Putin.
The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEO) said on Friday that the agency was encouraged to see the fate of the Zaporizizhia work, “in ongoing talks” regarding the war in Ukraine in relation to the war regarding Ukraine.
General Director Rafael Mariano Grossi said that the IAEO was ready to provide help “to implement a future agreement about the work”.
“A suitcase without a handle”
Oleksandr Kharchenko, an energy analyst based in Kyiv, said the return of the work to the Ukrainian network as Kyiv demands a “game changer” for energy generation not only for Ukraine, but also for eastern and Central Europe.
Before the war, the station delivered 20 percent of Ukraine’s performance. Ukraine had started large -scale electricity exports in the European Union shortly before the invasion, but stopped when Russia hammered its infrastructure with rockets and drones.
Kharchenko said it would take up to a year to restart only one reactor, and up to four years before the entire station is brought up due to various problems.
On the one hand, the system lost access to water from the now surveyed Kakhovka Reservoir after the hydropower station and the dam had been blown up in the air in 2023 in front of the Ukrainian counter-offensive.
Since then, the nuclear system has taken water out of a cooler pond, but the water level has decreased.
Engineers of the Ukraine Energy Ministry say that the lack of water would mean that only a maximum of two of the six reactors of the system could be switched on to generate electricity.
In addition, they say that it would take at least a year to restart even the limited operations because the technical condition of the system is not known.
An employee of the work who fled at work and now lives in Kyiv told Reuters that Ukraine had designed a detailed plan for the potential return of the facility.
The employee who asked not to be named because their relatives still lived under the line -up said that it would not be enough that Russia would only hand over the nuclear power plant.
The Russians would also have to give up the adjacent heating power plant, nearby settlements such as the city of Energhodar and a route on the street to the Ukrainian -controlled city of Zaporizhzhia, said the worker.
For some people such as pensioners and Zaporizhzhia Olha Shyshkyna, the return of the plant will probably look like one day, since it has not had any actual use for the Russian side.
“For Russia, our atomic station is like a suitcase without a handle. After all, it is not in operation and now it is only a toy. It is of crucial importance for us,” she said.
