Even as hopes were raised that a permanent presence of United Nations inspectors would help reduce the risk of disaster at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine, the war once again endangered the plant's safe operation.
After shelling Friday evening, the plant lost the connection with its only remaining primary external power line, forcing it to use a lower-voltage reserve line to power the cooling equipment needed to prevent meltdowns, the International Atomic Energy Agency said in a statement Saturday.
Still, agency director Rafael Mariano Grossi expressed cautious optimism that a plan to station two nuclear experts at the plant indefinitely would help lower the risk of a catastrophe.
"We believe it was important for the agency to be there permanently," he said.
He added that putting independent nuclear experts at the plant will allow for unbiased reports on conditions in real time.
"Now, when there is an allegation that something has happened at the plant, you can turn to us," he said, rather than weighing the conflicting claims of Russia and Ukraine.
Grossi, who has avoided placing blame for the shelling on either the Russians or the Ukrainians, said Friday that it appeared the power supply to the plant was being deliberately targeted.
On Saturday, Grossi said the presence of the agency's inspectors, who were able to confirm the damage to the external power line, was already proving valuable.
"Our team on the ground received direct, fast and reliable information about the latest significant development affecting the plant's external power situation, as well as the operational status of the reactors," he said.
One of the six reactors at the plant is currently operational and producing electricity for cooling and other essential safety functions at the site and for Ukrainian households and factories, the agency reported.
The U.N. move to keep a pair of inspectors at the plant comes as fighting has continued to rage across southern and eastern Ukraine. The plant lies precariously close to some of the most intense fighting.
On Saturday, British military intelligence said Ukraine's advance on three fronts in the south, including in the western Kherson region, was likely to have "achieved a degree of tactical surprise: exploiting poor logistics, administration and leadership in the Russian armed forces."
But military analysts have dampened expectations for the Ukrainian drive, saying that between 15,000 and 25,000 Russian soldiers are stationed in fortified defenses to the west of the Dnieper River.
Jack Watling, a research fellow and specialist in land warfare at the Royal United Services Institute in Britain, wrote that unless Russian forces collapse because of abysmal morale -- which he said "is possible but not something that can be assumed in planning" -- then any battlefield success for the Ukrainians would take time.
In a different front in the Ukraine war, German officials expressed guarded confidence that their country could endure a winter without Russian energy after Russia postponed gas deliveries to the country indefinitely.
Knowing Russian President Vladimir Putin's history of wielding energy supplies as a foreign policy tool, Berlin has been preparing for months for the possibility that Russia may cut gas deliveries in retaliation for European opposition to Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.
'GAME WITH DEATH'
In other developments, a top Russian official accused the U.S. and its allies Saturday of trying to provoke the country's breakup and warned that such attempts could lead to doomsday.
Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy secretary of Russia's Security Council chaired by Putin, warned the West that an attempt to push Russia toward collapse would amount to a "chess game with Death."
Medvedev, who served as Russia's president from 2008-12 when term limits forced Putin to shift into the prime minister's post, was widely seen by the West as more liberal than his mentor. In recent months, however, he has made remarks that have sounded much tougher than those issued by the most hawkish Kremlin officials in an apparent attempt to curry favor with Putin.
After attending Saturday's farewell ceremony for former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, Medvedev published a post on his messaging app channel, referring to the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union and accusing the U.S. and its allies of trying to engineer Russia's breakup.
Medvedev alleged that some in the West would like to "take advantage of the military conflict in Ukraine to push our country to a new twist of disintegration, do everything to paralyze Russia's state institutions and deprive the country of efficient controls, as happened in 1991."
"Those are the dirty dreams of the Anglo-Saxon perverts, who go to sleep with a secret thought about the breakup of our state, thinking about how to shred us into pieces, cut us into small bits." Medvedev wrote. "Such attempts are very dangerous and mustn't be underestimated."
Medvedev concluded by saying that Russia's nuclear arsenals are "the best guarantee of safeguarding the Great Russia."
'FOREIGN AGENTS'
Russian authorities on Friday designated a rock musician, a key ally of jailed opposition leader Alexey Navalny and four other people as "foreign agents," alleging they engaged in unspecified political activities while receiving funding from Ukraine.
Among the new names added to the online "foreign agent" register maintained by Russia's justice ministry were Andrey Makarevich, the founder of cult Soviet and Russian band Mashina Vremeni, and Ivan Zhdanov, the former head of Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation. Also added were a Russian political scientist, a high-profile businessman and philanthropist and two journalists.
Russian law allows organizations and individuals deemed to be involved in political activity that receive funding from abroad to be declared foreign agents. The term carries a strong pejorative sense and implies additional government scrutiny.
Pro-Kremlin Russian politicians previously condemned Makarevich for "supporting Kyiv's anti-Russian policy" in 2014 after he played a concert for refugees in an eastern Ukrainian town retaken by government forces from pro-Russian separatists that the Kremlin began backing in parallel with its annexation of Crimea that same year.
Another Russian rock legend, Yuri Shevchuk, was fined $815 last month after a Russian court found him guilty of "discrediting" the Russian army over his speaking out against Moscow's invasion of Ukraine at one of his performances.
Information for this article was contributed by Marc Santora and Andrew E. Kramer of The New York Times and by Vladimir Isachenkov and staff members of The Associated Press.