Putin’s recklessness should alarm us all
For a country that presided over one of the world’s worst nuclear power disasters, Russia’s latest action in Ukraine is reckless in the extreme. Almost 40 years after the explosion at Chernobyl sent radiation across Europe and beyond, the military action near the Zaporizhzhya plant is understandably causing alarm. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has issued an urgent warning of a “very real risk of a nuclear disaster”.
IAEA chief Rafael Mariano Grossi said he was “extremely concerned” by reports of shelling at what is Europe’s largest nuclear power plant. Ukraine said parts of the facility had been “seriously damaged” by Russian military strikes.
Russia seized the plant in March and retained Ukrainian staff to run it. Kyiv says Russian forces are firing rockets at civilian areas from the site. Moscow says it is the Ukrainians who are hitting the facility in retaliation. But Mr Grossi said “any military firepower directed at or from the facility would amount to playing with fire, with potentially catastrophic consequences”.
The early stages of the conflict were marked by thinly veiled nuclear threats from Russia, though the Kremlin has since rowed back on such dangerous rhetoric. However, it is a disaster involving civilian nuclear power that now carries the greatest risk to non-combatant countries. The area around Zaporizhzhya contains six pressurised water reactors and the site also stores radioactive waste. It is some 350 miles south of Chernobyl, where an explosion in 1986, when Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union, caused one of only two international-scale nuclear events, the other being at Fukushima, Japan, following a tsunami.
The Chernobyl disaster deposited radioactive material across Europe, but especially in other parts of the Soviet Union, which should give the Kremlin pause for thought. Although the immediate death toll from the accident was relatively small, it is estimated that some 4,000 fatalities in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia could be attributed to disease triggered by the radioactive fallout.
The consequences of rocket attacks on Zaporizhzhya, whether deliberately targeted or by accident, is obvious to anyone, including Vladimir Putin. His invasion of Ukraine has been a disaster for Russia but this irresponsible breach of nuclear safety threatens to inflict his calamity on the rest of Europe. Perhaps that is his intention.