Ukraine Warns of Possible Nuclear Plant Attack as Tensions Escalate: Updates

Ukraine has denied any involvement in the alleged smuggling plot, which the FSB said it had foiled. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned international representatives on Thursday that Russia may be planning to attack an occupied nuclear power plant in Ukraine, leading to a possible radiation disaster. He urged other countries to “give appropriate signals and exert pressure” on Moscow. The head of the UN’s atomic energy agency is attempting to negotiate for a safety perimeter to protect the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, Europe’s largest nuclear power station. 

The International Atomic Energy Agency noted on Thursday that the “the military situation has become increasingly tense” in the area as a Ukrainian counteroffensive that got underway this month unfolds. 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 “emphasised that they now expect specific steps” from the UN agency to prevent Ukrainian attacks on the plant and its adjacent territory. Russian shelling in the southern province of Zaporizhzhia killed two people in the past day, while in Kherson province two were killed in an attack on a transportation company.Russia also fired thirteen cruise missiles overnight at a military airfield in the western Khmelnytskyi province, but Ukrainian air defences intercepted them all.

In his nightly address, Zelenskyy 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. He said that radiation could reach anyone in the world and that anyone in the world could help prevent a radiation catastrophe. He also said that Ukraine is fighting to force Russian troops out of the illegally annexed regions and Crimea, which Moscow is using as a staging and supply route in the 16-month-old war. Ukrainian forces hope to reach a pair of occupied port cities on the Sea of Azoz and break Russia’s land bridge to Crimea. Russia, on the other hand, claimed it was the target of “an information and propaganda campaign to discredit the country in the international arena” and said five people were arrested for trying to smuggle a kilogram of the radioactive isotope Cesium-137 out of the country under the direction of a Ukrainian intelligence service. Ukraine has denied any involvement in the alleged smuggling plot.