On one side of the Dnieper River is the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, visible in the haze. Six nuclear reactors and a cooling tower loom over a Soviet-built reservoir. On the opposite bank is Nikopol, a city in southern Ukraine known for its Cossack past and modern tube and metallurgical factories.
The distance between them is seven kilometres. Or, measured in rocket terms, about 15 seconds: the time it takes for a Grad missile fired by Russian soldiers ensconced in the atomic station to slam into Nikopol’s chestnut tree-lined boulevards. It is a small and terrifying interval between life and death.
