Zelenskyy to other countries: Act before Russia attacks nuclear plant
>> Ukraine wants other countries to heed its warning that Russia may be planning to attack an occupied nuclear power plant to cause a radiation disaster, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said.
Members of his government briefed international representatives on Thursday on the possible threat to the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant. In his nightly address, Zelenskyy said he expected other nations to “give appropriate signals and exert pressure” on Moscow.
“Our principle is simple: The world must know what the occupier is preparing. Everyone who knows must act,” Zelenskyy said. “The world has enough power to prevent any radiation incidents, let alone a radiation catastrophe.”
The potential for a lifethreatening release of radiation has been a concern since Russian troops invaded Ukraine last year and seized the plant, which is Europe’s largest nuclear power station.
The head of the U.N.’s atomic energy agency spent months unsuccessfully trying to negotiate for a safety perimeter to protect the facility as nearby areas came under repeated shelling.
The International Atomic Energy Agency noted Thursday that the “the military situation has become increasingly tense” while a Ukrainian counteroffensive that got underway this month unfolds in Zaporizhzhia province, where the namesake plant is located, and in an adjacent part of Donetsk province.
On Friday, IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi met with the director of Russian state nuclear corporation Rosatom to discuss the conditions at the plant.
Rosatom director Alexey Likachev and other officials at the meeting in the Kaliningrad exclave “emphasized that they now expect specific steps” from the U.N. agency to prevent Ukrainian attacks on the plant and its adjacent territory, said a statement from the Russian corporation, whose divisions build and operate nuclear power plants.
The governor of Zaporizhzhia, Yuriy Malashko, reported Friday that Russian shelling in the southern province killed two people in the past day. An attack that hit a transportation company in Kherson, the capital of Kherson province, killed two others on Friday, governor Oleksandr Prokudin said.
Russia also fired 13 cruise missiles overnight at a military airfield in the western Khmelnytskyi province but Ukrainian air defenses intercepted them all, according to the air force. The attack came after Russian-appointed officials said that Ukrainianfired missiles damaged a bridge that serves as key supply link to occupied areas of southern Ukraine.
Russia’s air-launched Kh101 and Kh-555 missiles were sent from the Caspian Sea, the air force said. It did not identify the targeted airfield, but Ukraine has an air base near the Khmelnytskyi region’s town of Starokostiantyniv.