Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant back on grid after losing its last power line

The Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant is hooked back up to the grid. The International Atomic Energy Agency said Sunday it was told off-site power had been restored at the Russian-controlled facility in Ukraine, closing out the plant's 27th loss of external electricity since the war began.

It was a close call earlier in the day. The plant dropped its connection to the last working 330-kilovolt line — the one Ukrainian nuclear company Energoatom calls Ferosplavna-1 — and fell back on emergency diesel generators, the IAEA said. An automatic attempt to re-energize the line failed, per Energoatom, which warned that losing power at ZNPP poses a critical threat.

The plant has now been through this 27 times since the fighting started. Each outage forces it onto backup generators, the thin line keeping cooling systems alive at a site that has been a running worry for nuclear watchdogs throughout the conflict.

Elsewhere, the war kept moving. Russia's Defense Ministry said its forces downed 50 Ukrainian drones over the course of Sunday, spread across the Belgorod, Bryansk, Kursk and Rostov regions as well as the Republic of Crimea.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Moscow of using the ceasefire in Oleshky, in southern Ukraine's Kherson Oblast, to pull off what he called a significant rotation of personnel and equipment. In a Telegram post, he said additional Russian forces were deployed to the town and its surrounding community, and that Ukraine's Armed Forces command must submit proposals for extra protection of life in Kherson.

Diplomacy has a date on the calendar too. France's Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot told RTL on Sunday that European representatives will be at Ukraine peace negotiations in Abu Dhabi on November 10 and 11, saying France will be there for the talks. That follows Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov's earlier claim that the Abu Dhabi meeting would run in a trilateral format and focus on security issues.