On Saturday, a hole appeared in the wall of a turbine building at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southeastern Ukraine — or so Russia says. Rosatom, the Kremlin's state nuclear energy company, claimed that a Ukrainian kamikaze drone had struck the turbine hall of Power Unit No. 6, causing a detonation that tore through the structure but left primary equipment intact. The incident, if confirmed, would be the first drone strike inside the plant's perimeter since April 2024, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

The competing accounts that followed were as sharp as the damage itself. Rosatom chief Alexei Likhachev described the strike as deliberate, framing it as a Ukrainian attack on critical nuclear infrastructure. Kyiv flatly denied the accusation, with Ukraine's military insisting that its forces had not used any weapons at the relevant section of the front line and that its servicemen act strictly within international humanitarian law. Neither claim has been independently verified — a reminder that in this war, the fog of battle extends even to facilities that the world cannot afford to get wrong.

The IAEA moved quickly.