The Power War - Why the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Plant Becomes a Flashpoint in the Peace Plan

In the shadow of all front lines lies a place where Ukraine’s future could be decided - not by weapons, but by electricity. The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe’s largest, has been under Russian occupation for almost four years. All six reactors are shut down, the site has been damaged multiple times, and the risk of a nuclear incident remains real. Yet what stands idle today could tomorrow become a key resource for reconstruction - or a source of Russian control.

President Zelensky recently said that Ukraine and the United States are “90 percent” aligned on ending the war. But within the remaining ten percent lies the most sensitive dispute: Who gets the nuclear plant? Russia wants to keep it, Ukraine wants it back, and Washington is pushing for joint operation - with itself in the role of lead administrator. Kyiv categorically rejects this. Because the plant is more than a technical site. Before the war, it supplied a quarter of Ukraine’s electricity. Today, it would be indispensable for reconstruction - not only for homes and roads, but also for energy intensive projects like data centers or raw material processing. The United States secured preferential rights early on to develop Ukrainian minerals. But without sufficient electricity, those agreements are worthless. Zaporizhzhia is therefore central to American economic interests as well.

Russia, meanwhile, is pursuing a different plan. Investigations show that Russia has already built power lines to feed the plant’s electricity into the Russian grid - not only for its own supply, but also for the occupied territories in southern Ukraine. “They occupied it, and they believe we cannot stop them from putting it back into operation,” Zelensky said. Moscow presents the plant as a humanitarian factor - for people in regions without water and electricity. The subtext is clear: Anyone who resists is denying civilians what they need to survive. In the meantime, there have been repeated outages. Fighting nearby damaged power lines on which the cooling of the spent fuel depends. Diesel generators kicked in, but the situation remained tense. After the destruction of a dam in 2023, the plant had to switch to a smaller cooling pond and groundwater wells. The fear of an accident persisted.

An earlier peace draft envisioned control by the International Atomic Energy Agency, with electricity distributed evenly between Russia and Ukraine. In the latest version, U.S. negotiators proposed joint operation of the plant - Russia, Ukraine, and the United States, with the latter as the “lead operator,” as Zelensky put it. For him, an absurd idea: “How can there be joint commercial activity with Russia - after everything that has happened?” Instead, Kyiv proposes a model in which the plant is run with the United States as a partner. Half of the electricity would go to Ukraine, while Washington would be free to dispose of the other half - including, as an unspoken option, routing part of it to Russia. But that Moscow would voluntarily give up the plant is considered unlikely.

For fifteen hours, Zelensky said, discussions in recent days revolved around the future of Zaporizhzhia. It is not just a dispute over technology, power, or control. It is a struggle over independence, reconstruction, sovereignty. And over the question of who ultimately owns what became a target in the middle of the war.