Explosions Rock Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant

Each side blamed the other for shelling near the plant, which severed a high-voltage power line, prompting plant staff to close one of its six reactors over the weekend, according to the Ukrainian nuclear regulator, Energoatom. The plant has been controlled by the Russians since the early days of the war, but Ukrainian staff are still operating it.

“This time a nuclear catastrophe was miraculously avoided, but miracles cannot last forever,” Energoatom said on Telegram Sunday.

Roughly 500 Russian troops were at the nuclear station, where they have been entrenched for several weeks and are firing rockets at Ukrainian positions across the river, according to Ukrainian officials.

So far, Ukrainian authorities have said there has been no damage to the reactors and no radiological release. But rockets fired on Saturday night damaged three radiation monitors, Energoatom said on Telegram Sunday, and about 800 square meters of window surfaces in plant buildings were damaged due to fragments from explosions. One nuclear plant employee was hospitalized with shrapnel wounds.

Olexandr Lubishko, a volunteer from Melitopol, Ukraine, showed his organization’s warehouse in Zaporizhzhia on Sunday. Mr. Lubishko helps refugees and local people in need with food and hygiene kits. Serhii Korovayny for The Wall Street Journal

More explosions around Enerhodar were reported on social media Sunday, but couldn’t be independently verified.

Oleksandr Starukh, the governor of the Zaporizhzhia region, wrote on Telegram Sunday that because of the hostilities and planned maintenance, only two of the nuclear plant’s six reactors were connected to the power grid.

“Due to the destruction of power grids, there is a danger that it will not be possible to withdraw electricity from the station,” he wrote. Energoatom has also accused Russia of trying to disconnect the nuclear station from the power grid, which could plunge much of southern Ukraine into darkness.

Russian-installed authorities in Enerhodar, a municipality in the western part of the Zaporizhzhia region, told the Russian news agency RIA Novosti that fragments of rockets they said were fired overnight by Ukrainian forces landed no more than 400 meters from the power plant. The report couldn’t be independently verified.

Alarmed at the shelling around the plant and damage to the site, the head of the United Nations atomic agency on Saturday condemned the military activity near the power station and pressed for his team to be given access to the plant. Ukraine is already the site of the world’s most catastrophic nuclear accident, the meltdown at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in 1986.

“Any military firepower directed at or from the facility would amount to playing with fire, with potentially catastrophic consequences,” the International Atomic Energy Agency’s

Rafael Grossi

said.

The weekend shelling is the latest in a series of incidents at the country’s nuclear facilities, including a previous fire at Zaporizhzhia caused by a Russian missile and a loss of power at the Chernobyl site, over which Ukraine regained control after Moscow withdrew troops from northern Ukraine in March.

In a speech overnight, Ukraine’s President

Volodymyr Zelensky

said the threat to the nuclear power plant justified sanctions against the entire Russian nuclear industry.

“The Russian shelling of the nuclear plant is one of the most dangerous crimes against Ukrainians and all Europeans,” Mr. Zelensky said.

Also on Sunday, a third shipment of food products left Ukrainian ports.

A convoy of four ships, carrying more than 161,000 metric tons of corn, sunflower oil and other goods, departed ports in Odessa on Sunday morning, according to Ukrainian authorities. It was the second multiship convoy to leave Ukraine in three days under a U.N.-backed agreement with Russia, and is aimed at alleviating a global hunger crisis amid a surge in global food prices caused in part by Russia’s assault on Ukraine.

The war trapped millions of tons of grain and other food products in the country. The agreement signed last month was the result of months of negotiations brokered by Turkey and the U.N.

Eight ships in total have now departed Odessa’s ports this month under the agreement in what the U.N. says is proof the agreement can actually work.

In a sign that the shipments may be able to continue, the first inbound ship to sail to Ukraine under the agreement arrived in Odessa, according to Ukrainian officials and ship tracking data.

“Our next step is to ensure the ability of [Ukrainian] ports to handle more than 100 vessels a month,” tweeted Ukraine’s Infrastructure Minister

Oleksandr Kubrakov,

who signed the agreement last month.

Food in the shipments is vital for recipient countries including Lebanon, while revenue from the exports is crucial for Ukraine’s struggling economy. Russia, meanwhile, faces falling export revenue due to sanctions and restrictions on its currency.

Data published by Russia’s Ministry of Finance last week show revenues from oil and gas, which Russia has been using to fund its military campaign in Ukraine, more than halved in July compared with April, dropping from 1,797.7 billion rubles to 770.5 billion rubles. The ministry’s data is presented in rubles, while oil and gas are priced globally in U.S. dollars. The ruble traded at around 83 rubles to the dollar at the start of April, compared with 52 rubles to the dollar in July.

—Ann M. Simmons in Moscow contributed to this article.

Write to Ian Lovett at ian.lovett@wsj.com and Jared Malsin at jared.malsin@wsj.com

Corrections & Amplifications
Data published by Russia’s Ministry of Finance show revenues from oil and gas more than halved in July compared with April, dropping from 1,797.7 billion rubles to 770.5 billion rubles. An earlier version of this article incorrectly said revenue dropped from 1,797.7 million rubles in April to 770.5 rubles in July. (Corrected on Aug. 8).