The site of Ukraine’s Zaporizhia nuclear power plant, Europe’s largest, was bombed again on Thursday, with Ukraine and Russia blaming each other, while the UN secretary-general warned of the risk of “catastrophe” shortly before of an emergency meeting of the Security Council on this issue.
“The situation is getting worse, radioactive substances are nearby and several radiation sensors have been damaged,” said the Ukrainian state-owned company Energoatom after these attacks.
Concern of the international community
“At the moment, no contamination has been detected at the station and the level of radioactivity is normal,” said Evguéni Balitski, head of the civil and military administration installed in this region of southeastern France, east of Russia. occupied Ukraine, noting that “several tons” of radioactive waste are stored there.
“Five new attacks were reported in the immediate vicinity of a radioactive substance repository,” Energoatom said, pointing to Russian forces, which seized the Zaporizhia power plant on March 4, just days after the February 24 start of the attack. its offensive in the Ukraine. .
A pro-Russian official, Vladimir Rogov, a member of the Moscow-installed regional administration, blamed “(Ukrainian President Volodymyr) Zelensky’s fighters,” citing five shots from multiple rocket launchers and heavy artillery pieces on the right bank. of the Dnieper, the great river that crosses the region, in the same place and in identical terms.
“L’herbe s’est enflammée sur une petite surface, mais personne n’a été blessé”, peut-on lire dans les communiqués russe et ukrainien, que font état de cinq autres projectiles tombés près d’une caserne de pompiers située non away from.
Several attacks for which the two parties also refuse to take responsibility, without it being possible to verify these statements from independent sources, had already occurred in the territory of the plant at the end of last week, raising fears of a nuclear disaster. Strikes also continued overnight from Wednesday to Thursday on the front lines, including in the vicinity of these highly sensitive facilities.
Risk of “catastrophic consequences”
“Unfortunately, instead of a de-escalation, even more disturbing incidents have been reported in recent days, incidents that if continued could lead to a catastrophe,” United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Thursday, telling himself , “seriously concerned”. about the situation in and around the plant.
“It must be clear, any damage to Zaporizhia or any other nuclear site in Ukraine, or anywhere else, could have catastrophic consequences not only around but for the region and beyond. This is totally unacceptable,” he insisted.
“I asked everyone to use common sense and reason,” added Antonio Guterres, who urged “immediately cease” all military activity near the plant, not “attack” it and not use its territory “in the context of operations military” and pronounce itself in favor of the creation of a “demilitarized perimeter to guarantee the security of the zone”.
The UN Security Council will meet urgently on Thursday to discuss this burning issue, at Russia’s request. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has indicated that its director general, Rafael Grossi, will inform this organization of “the situation of nuclear safety” in Zaporizhia, as well as of its “efforts to arrange a mission of IAEA experts to site as soon as possible.”
“Russia is now a terrorist state and is holding the nuclear power plant hostage, blackmailing the nuclear disaster,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a speech to a donor conference in Copenhagen on Thursday.
Russia can cause there “the largest radioactive emergency in history (…). And the consequences can be even worse than those (of the 1986 accident) at Chernobyl,” he added.
russian bombing
In Nikopol, in southeastern Ukraine, about 100 kilometers from Zaporijjia, on the other side of the Dnieper, Governor Valentyn Reznichenko reported three dead and nine wounded in overnight Russian Grad multiple rocket launches.
In the east, in the Donbass mining basin, the head of the military administration of the Donetsk region, Pavlo Kyrylenko, announced this morning that 11 civilians had been killed in the last 24 hours.
And the Russians are relentlessly bombing Soledar, an industrial city of 11,000 before the war, trying to drive out the Ukrainian army to advance on the neighboring and larger city of Bakhmout.
Since Russian troops ended their operation in Kyiv in late March and withdrew from the capital’s outskirts, the Kremlin has made Donbass, partly controlled since 2014 by pro-Russian separatists, its main target. The real Russian advance is very slow and the war has turned into artillery duels between two armies entrenched around a few towns.
“We are waiting for the armed forces to liberate the south of our country, including Mariupol. We are waiting for it and it will happen soon”, however launched the mayor of this martyr city, Vadim Boïtchenko.
In Belarus, the military on Thursday denied reports of explosions that occurred overnight near a military airfield in the Gomel region near the Ukrainian border. The Ministry of Defense only spoke of one vehicle that “came on fire”.
In Crimea, strong explosions ripped through an ammunition depot on a Russian military airfield on Tuesday, killing at least one person and wounding several others, but Moscow said no shelling or shooting had caused them.
kyiv has not admitted responsibility for any of the incidents, but an adviser to the presidency, Mikhailo Podoliak, wrote on Twitter: “The epidemic of technical accidents at airbases in Crimea and Belarus should be considered by the Russian military as a warning. : Forget Ukraine, take off your uniform and go. Neither in occupied Crimea nor in occupied Belarus will you be safe.”
Source: BFM TV
