The UN secretary-general warned on Thursday that any damage to Ukraine’s Zaporizhia nuclear power plant would be “suicide”, while Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said he feared a “new Chernobyl” during a meeting in Lviv with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
“We have to say things as they are: any potential damage in Zaporijjia would be suicide,” declared Antonio Guterres, calling once again to “demilitarize” the plant occupied by the Russian army. Saying he was “gravely concerned” by the situation in Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, he called for it not to be used “for any military operation whatsoever”.
For his part, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan affirmed Turkey’s support for Ukraine and expressed alarm at the danger of a “new Chernobyl”, in reference to the largest civilian nuclear accident in history. On April 26, 1986, reactor number 4 at the Chernobyl power plant exploded, releasing a radioactive cloud that spread across Europe.
Occupied since the beginning of March, this power plant in the south of the country has been the prey since the end of July of bombardments of which Moscow and kyiv accuse each other.
President Zelensky said on Thursday that his Turkish counterpart’s visit to Lviv was a “powerful message of support” for his country. “As we continue our efforts for a solution, we have been and continue to be on the side of our Ukrainian friends,” Erdoğan said.
Volodymyr Zelensky ruled out any peace negotiations with Moscow without the prior withdrawal of Russian troops from the territory of Ukraine. “People who kill, rape, hit our civilian cities with cruise missiles every day cannot want peace. They should first leave our territory, then we’ll see,” Zelensky told a press conference in Lviv, saying “not to trust Russia”.
In the morning, the Russian army assured that it had not deployed “heavy weapons” in and around the Zaporijjia power plant, contrary to what kyiv claims. Ukraine also accuses Russia of using the plant as a firing base on Ukrainian positions, which Moscow denies.
Conversely, Russia says that the Ukrainian military wants to fire their artillery at the plant and then accuse it of having caused a nuclear accident.
For his part, the Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Dmytro Kouleba, announced on Twitter that the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Grossi, told him to be “ready” to go to the plant at the head of a delegation.
The day before, the secretary general of the OTAB, Jens Stoltenberg, had considered “urgent” such an inspection of the IAEA.
Mortal combats near Kharkiv
Fighting continues meanwhile in the Kharkiv region in the northeast of the country, where Ukrainians have accused the Russians of shelling living quarters, killing six there on Thursday, after 13 the previous evening , and dozens of injuries in total.
“Last night and this morning were the most tragic moments in Kharkiv since the beginning of the war,” said its mayor Igor Terekhov, signaling that Friday would be a day of mourning for the victims.
Located about forty kilometers from the Russian border, this city, the second largest in Ukraine, is regularly pounded by Russian soldiers, who have never managed to seize it. Hundreds of civilians were killed in this region, according to the authorities.
In the south, one person died and two others were injured after a strike in Mykolaiv, announced its mayor, Oleksandr Senkevych.
New cereal equipment
The Zelensky-Erdoğan-Guterres meeting comes against a background of increasing negotiations to allow the resumption of grain exports from Ukraine, one of the world’s leading producers and exporters.
Mr. Guterres promised on Thursday that his organization would try to “intensify” Ukrainian grain exports before the onset of winter, as these are crucial for the food supply of many African countries.
They were blocked for several months following the Russian invasion, raising the specter of a global food crisis. But an agreement signed by Russia and Ukraine, and validated by the United Nations and Turkey, made it possible to resume these exports in July. Mr. Erdoğan, who is posing as a mediator on this subject, went to talk about it in Russia with President Vladimir Putin in early August.
A first humanitarian ship chartered by the UN, loaded with 23,000 tonnes of wheat, left Ukraine on Tuesday, heading for Ethiopia.
On Thursday, another vessel loaded with grain sailed, the 25th since the signing of the agreement, the Ukrainian port authorities announced. In total, “more than 600,000 tons of Ukrainian agricultural products” have since passed through the “grain corridor” from the ports of Odessa, Pivdenny and Chornomorsk, they added.
A Russian ship carrying stolen Ukrainian grain has however arrived in Syria, the Ukrainian embassy in Lebanon said on Thursday, after several grain carriers caused controversy by docking in the war-torn country.