The prime danger to Ukraine’s Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP), which Kiev never failed to complain about, it turns out, was ... Ukraine. On Oct 8, the head of Ukraine’s Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) Kyrylo Budanov admitted publicly on Oct. 8, in an interview with the Ukrainian news outlet NV, that his forces had launched three major amphibious assaults against the ZNPP. The first one was on Oct. 19, 2022, involving up to 600 armed commandos and using 37 civilian speedboats, crossing the Kakhovka reservoir on the Dnieper River. They lost some 90 troops that time. Moscow which has controlled ZNPP since before then, certainly reported the attack, but Kiev did not confirm the incident at the time. International agencies kept mum.
Budanov explained that the most recent assault involved hundreds of troops and included foreign fighters. Budanov relates that all three assaults failed, but the surviving troops and planners gained experience in amphibious operations, which they can use against non-nuclear sites, such as Crimea, which rejoined Russia in 2014. Curiously, however, the first amphibious operation against Crimea didn’t go so well. Last week, 17 Ukrainian commandos attempted a landing on the western tip of Crimea, with the objective of taking a photo of themselves on Crimean land while holding a Ukrainian flag. The landing failed and the photo op went by the wayside.
