President Zelenskyy said the Ukrainian army is targeting Russian soldiers who are shooting at the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant or using it as a cover.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said his army was targeting Russian soldiers occupying a nuclear power plant in the south of the country.
Russia and Ukraine have exchanged allegations over several recent shelling incidents at the Zaporizhia plant, Europe’s largest nuclear power plant. Russian troops captured the station early in the war.
“Every Russian soldier who either shoots at the facility or uses the facility as cover must understand that he becomes a special target for our secret agents, for our special services, for our army,” Zelenskyy said in a speech on Saturday evening.
Zelenskyy, who gave no details, repeated allegations that Russia was using the facility as a form of nuclear blackmail.
Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence Service had earlier warned of new Russian “provocations” around the plant, while the exiled mayor of the city where the plant is located said it had come under renewed Russian fire.
traded allegations
Earlier, Russian-installed local official Vladimir Rogov wrote on Telegram that Ukrainian forces were shelling the plant.
“Energodar and the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant are under fire again [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky’s militants,” Rogov said, referring to the city where the plant is located.
Missiles fell “in the areas on the banks of the Dnipro River and at the plant,” he said, without reporting casualties or damage.
Ukraine’s presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak accused Russia of “hitting the part of the nuclear power plant that produces the energy that supplies electricity to southern Ukraine.”
“The goal is to separate us from the (facility) and blame the Ukrainian army,” Podolyak wrote on Twitter.
Defense Intelligence said Russian troops parked a Pion self-propelled howitzer outside the nearby town and put a Ukrainian flag on it.
The agency also said Thursday’s attacks on the territory of the plant, which Ukraine says damaged water pumping infrastructure and a fire station, were carried out from the Russian-controlled village of Vodiane, about seven kilometers (4, 35 miles) east of the plant.
The Russian-occupied and Ukrainian-controlled areas are separated by the Dnieper River.
The UN nuclear chief warned on Thursday that “very alarming” military activity at the site could have dangerous consequences for the region and called for an end to attacks on the site.
Rafael Grossi called on Russia and Ukraine, who blame each other for the attacks on the site, to immediately allow nuclear experts to assess damage and assess safety at the sprawling nuclear complex, where the situation is “deteriorating very quickly.” Has”.
Ukraine, backed by Western allies, has called for a demilitarized zone around the plant and the withdrawal of Russian forces.