UKRAINE NUKE PLANT WORRIES GROW AMID EVACUATIONS
Moscow-installed governor orders civilians to leave
Anxiety about the safety of Europe’s largest nuclear power plant grew Sunday after the Moscow-installed governor of the Ukrainian region where it is located ordered civilian evacuations, including from the city where most plant workers live.
International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Rafael Grossi has spent months trying to persuade Russian and Ukrainian officials to establish a security zone around the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant to prevent the war from
causing a radiation leak.
The evacuations ordered by the Russia-backed governor of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia province, Yegeny Balitsky, raised fears that fighting in the area would intensify. Balitsky on Friday
ordered civilians to leave 18 Russian-occupied communities, including Enerhodar, home to most of the plant staff.
More than 1,500 people had been evacuated from two unspecified cities in the region as of Sunday, Balitsky said. The Ukrainian General Staff confirmed the evacuation of Enerhodar was under way.
Moscow’s troops seized the plant soon after invading Ukraine last year, but Ukrainian employees have continued to run it during the occupation, at times under extreme duress.
Ukraine has regularly fired at the Russian side of the lines, while Russia has repeatedly shelled Ukrainianheld communities across the Dnieper River. The fighting has intensified as Ukraine prepares to launch a longpromised counteroffensive to reclaim ground taken by Russia.
Ukrainian authorities on Sunday said that a 72-yearold woman was killed and three others were wounded when Russian forces fired more than 30 shells at the city of Nikopol, about 6 miles across the river from the plant.
Grossi said the evacuation of civilians suggested a further escalation.
“The general situation in the area near the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant is becoming increasingly unpredictable and potentially dangerous,” Grossi warned Saturday.
“We must act now to prevent the threat of a severe nuclear accident and its associated consequences for the population and the environment. This major nuclear facility must be protected,” he said.
Although none of the plant’s six reactors are operating because of the war, the station needs a reliable power supply for cooling systems essential to preventing a potentially catastrophic radiation disaster.
Analysts have for months pointed to the southern Zaporizhzhia region as one of the possible targets of Ukraine’s expected spring counteroffensive, speculating that Kyiv’s forces might try to choke off Russia’s “land corridor” to the Crimean Peninsula and split Russian forces in two by pressing on to the Azov Sea coast.
Balitsky said Ukraine’s forces had intensified attacks on the area in the past several days.
Some of the fiercest ongoing fighting is in the eastern city of Bakhmut.