1 Institute for the Study of War & AEI’s Critical Threats Project 2022
Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, August 8
Layne Philipson, Katherine Lawlor, Karolina Hird, George Barros, Angela Howard, and
Frederick W. Kagan
August 8, 7:00 pm ET
Click here to see ISW's interactive map of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This map is
updated daily alongside the static maps present in this report.
Western and Ukrainian outlets circulated a report, likely false, of a Russian general
allegedly threatening to destroy Europe’s largest nuclear facility, the Russian-occupied
Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (NPP), if Russia could not hold the plant. Multiple news
outlets shared a screenshot from the Russian social networking site Vkontakte that claimed to cite the
Russian head of the Zaporizhia occupation garrison, Major General Valery Vasilev, stating that Russia
had mined the Zaporizhzhia NPP and that the plant would be “either Russian land or a scorched
desert.”
The screenshot appeared to be a news report posted in a Vkontakte group run by Russian
outlet Lenta Novosti Zaporizhia. The outlet itself claimed that the screenshot was from a faked group
and denied writing the report.
The Russian Ministry of Defense condemned the report and screenshot
as a “fake” and claimed that Vasilev was in Uzbekistan at the time he was purported to have made the
statement to forces at Zaporizhzhia.
Regardless of the origin (or existence) of the original post, the
reporting is unreliable. It is indirect and does not claim to cite an official statement or a statement made
on any official Russian news or government website.
This likely misreporting distracts from the very real risks of Russia’s militarization of
the Zaporizhzhia NPP, which may include mining the plant and almost certainly includes
the unsafe storage of military armaments near nuclear reactors and nuclear waste
storage facilities.
Bellingcat geolocated a drone video of the Zaporizhia NPP that was shared by
Russian opposition outlet The Insider on August 5. The video depicts Russian military vehicles moving
in and around the plant, including military trucks and armored vehicles moving around and into the
building containing the first of the plant’s six nuclear reactors.
Russian forces have also dug trenches
in and around the plant and may have established firing positions.
Russian officials claim that Ukraine
has repeatedly attacked the plant, while Ukrainian officials claim that Russian forces are attacking
Ukrainian positions from within the plant, preventing Ukrainian return fire and essentially using the
plant as a nuclear shield.
Russian forces have repeatedly shelled the nearby Ukrainian-controlled town
of Nikopol, likely from positions in or around the NPP, since July.
ISW continues to assess that Russian forces are likely leveraging the threat of nuclear disaster to
degrade Western will to provide military support to a Ukrainian counteroffensive.
Note: ISW does not receive any classified material from any source, uses only publicly
available information, and draws extensively on Russian, Ukrainian, and Western
reporting and social media as well as commercially available satellite imagery and other
geospatial data as the basis for these reports. References to all sources used are provided
in the endnotes of each update.
Key Takeaways
• Reporting of a likely falsified Russian statement distracts from the real risks of a
Russian-caused nuclear disaster at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant.
Russian forces continue to conduct attacks from and store military equipment
near the plant’s nuclear reactors, likely to play upon Western fears of a nuclear
