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 Zelensky said.
Members of his government briefed international representatives on the possible threat to the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant.
In his nightly address, Mr Zelensky 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,” Mr Zelensky said. “The world has enough power to prevent any radiation incidents, let alone a radiation catastrophe.”
The Kremlin’s spokesman has denied the threat to the plant is coming from Russian forces.
The potential for a life-threatening 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 UN’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 (IAEA) noted on Thursday that the “the military situation has become increasingly tense” while a Ukrainian counter-offensive that got under way this month unfolds in the province of Zaporizhzhia, where the namesake plant is located, and in an adjacent part of Donetsk.
Although the last of the plant’s six reactors was shut down last autumn to reduce the risk of a meltdown, experts have warned that a radiation release could still happen if the system that keeps the reactors’ cores and spent nuclear fuel cool loses power or water.
During months of fighting, Russia and Ukraine have traded blame over which side was increasing the threat to the plant.
On Friday, IAEA director general Rafael Grossi met the director of Russian state nuclear corporation Rosatom to discuss the conditions at the plant.
The illegal and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine is continuing.
The map below is the latest Defence Intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine – 23 June 2023.
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Rosatom director Alexey Likachev and other officials at the meeting “emphasised that they now expect specific steps” from the UN 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.
Earlier this week, Ukrainian officials accused Russia of mining the plant’s cooling system, already under threat from a dam collapse that drew down water in a reservoir that the power station uses.
Elsewhere in the southern Zaporizhzhia province, governor Yuriy Malashko reported on Friday that Russian shelling killed two people in the past day. And in the Kherson province, a Russian attack that hit a transportation company in the capital killed three people, governor Oleksandr Prokudin said.
Russia also fired 13 cruise missiles overnight at a military airfield in the western province of Khmelnytskyi but Ukrainian air defences intercepted them all, according to the air force.
The attack came after Russian-appointed officials said that Ukrainian-fired missiles damaged a bridge that serves as key supply link to occupied areas of southern Ukraine.
Russia’s air-launched Kh-101 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.
The base houses fighter jets and bombers, and five years ago it hosted a training exercise with air force personnel from the United States, Ukraine and seven European countries. It has come under Russian attack previously, including within the last month.
Ukrainian deputy defence minister Hanna Maliar said on Friday that Russia has beefed up its defence forces in southern Ukraine in response to the early counter-offensive and intensified its efforts to take more ground in the east.
Asked if the Ukrainian military’s initial attacks set the stage for a larger assault, Ms Maliar told Ukrainian television: “We are yet to see the main events, and the main blow. And indeed, a part of reserves will be used later.”
Ukrainian forces so far have made only incremental gains in Zaporizhzhia, one of four regions of the country that Russian President Vladimir Putin illegally annexed last year. Mr Putin has pledged to defend the regions as Russian territory.
Mr Zelensky has said that Ukraine is fighting to force Russian troops out of those regions and Crimea, which Moscow is using as a staging and supply route in the war.
If the counter-offensive, now in its early stages, breaks the Russian defences in the south, Ukrainian forces could attempt to reach a pair of occupied port cities on the Sea of Azoz and break Russia’s land bridge to Crimea.
The Ukrainian leader’s night-time remarks on Thursday on a possible attack on the nuclear power plant carried a tone of frustration with “countries that are pretending to be neutral even now” in the war.
He accused “anyone who turns a blind eye to Russia’s occupation of such a facility” of enabling Moscow to commit an act of evil and terror.
“Obviously, radiation does not ask who is neutral and can reach anyone in the world. Accordingly, anyone in the world can help now, and it is quite clear what to do,” Mr Zelensky said.
