Moscow is building powerlines in Russian-occupied southeastern Ukraine to link the major nuclear power plant it seized as a prize of war to its own electrical grid, according to a new Greenpeace report cited by The New York Times—a development that offers evidence of the Kremlin’s intent to restart and use the plant for its own purposes.

The facility, the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, was captured by Russian forces early in its invasion of Ukraine,  shocking the international community and raising fears of a nuclear catastrophe. Since then, the plant, which is Europe’s largest nuclear power station, has been occupied by the Russian military as well as technicians from Rosatom, Russia’s vast state nuclear corporation, making it a pawn in the conflict. Experts, including those from Bellona, have warned against restarting any of its six idled reactors before the fighting ceases.

Despite that, the Greenpeace report, verified by the Times, shows satellite images of powerlines and high-tension towers under construction between the Russian-occupied Ukrainian towns of Mariupol and Berdyansk on the Sea of Azov.

Based on the location and direction of the work, the Times quoted Greenpeace as saying, the new lines are intended to link an electrical substation near Mariupul that once was connected to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, located about 230 kilometers to the northwest.

Bellona nuclear expert Alexander Nikitin says that, should Russia eventually plan to connect the enormous plant to its own grid, transmission lines like the ones spotted by Greenpeace would be an important part of the recipe.

“There is nothing surprising in this. If the Zaporizhzhia NPP is restarted, it will only be after a political decision—but the task of Rosatom and its associated energy companies is to be technically ready for this.”

For now, Moscow’s intentions for the plant remain unclear. Aleksei Likhachev, the head of Rosatom, which now says it controls the Zaporizhzhia plant, has indicated that the reactors cannot be restarted until a political solution to the war is reached.

But last summer, official statements as well as signs on the grounds at the sprawling industrial complex seemed to suggest Russia was open to restarting the plant much earlier. Several months later, in April, President Vladimir Putin likewise voiced support for restarting the plant, but spelled out no timeline for doing so.

Bellona produced a wide-ranging report on what technological and safety considerations would have to be weighed in the event of a restart—and they’re considerable.

Primary among them, Nikitin pointed out, would be where the water needed to cool the plant’s reactors would come from, after its primary reservoirs were lost when the Kakhovka Dam was blown up in June 2023. Several secondary pools have been dug at the site since that event, but it’s unclear if they hold enough water for long term use, Nikitin said.

Four of the Zaporizhzhia plants six Soviet-built VVER reactors are also fueled with nuclear assemblies designed by the US firm Westinghouse—part an effort by Ukraine that began before the war to wean itself off Russian nuclear fuel supplies. How Russian technicians would handle this unfamiliar feedstock—which Westinghouse contracts and the International Atomic Energy Agency recognize as Ukrainian property—is also foggy, Nikitin said.

“This must be agreed upon with all players, including Ukraine, to which, according to the IAEA rules, this nuclear material belongs,” said Nikitin. “Where the American Westinghouse stands in all of this also an interesting question. In short, everything is unclear.”

Should Russia eventually wire the Zaporizhzhia plant to its own grid, it would represent the first time in history that a warring nation seized another country’s nuclear facility and used it for its own energy needs. It would also push against recent efforts by the Trump administration to discuss the fate of the plant as part of possible peace talks.

Last month, Trump floated the possibility of the US taking management the plant as part of a peace plan that would eventually see the facility produce power for both Ukraine and Russia.

The suggestion was flatly rejected days later by Russia’s Ministry of Foreign affairs, which, in a bluntly worded statement, asserted that the plant was the property of the Russian state. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov later said during an interview with CBS News in the US that Rosatom now runs the plant and that he didn’t think “any change is conceivable.”

The plant sits in the Russian-controlled region of Zaporizhzhia in Ukraine’s southeast, putting it dangerously close to the fighting, which makes its safe operation impossible. All six of its reactors were shut down after Russia seized the plant, the last going offline in 2023.

In their shutdown state, the content of short-lived and highly dangerous radionuclides like iodine-131 in the reactors’ uranium fuel is much lower than if the plant was active because they have partially, or even completely decayed since their shutdown. But once the reactors are restarted, these radionuclides will once again begin to form—making their spread into the environment possible should reactor containments be ruptured by military ordinance.

Moscow has nonetheless steadily signaled its intentions to bring the plant back online, at one point even citing last year as the target year for it to begin producing power again.

“Everyone is living with the dream of restarting the plant,” Rosatom’s Likhachev said in May, according to the Russian news agency Interfax. A plan had been developed to return the Zaporizhzhia facility to full capacity, he said.

In that sense, said Bellona’s Nikitin, restarting the plant has by now become something of a bureaucratic imperative in Moscow.

“What is happening today with the construction of power lines is preparation toward when a decision to restart it is suddenly made, and Likhachev is asked, ‘are you ready?’” said Nikitin. “And he will answer that we’ve done a hell of a job, and we are almost ready, but not quite.”