Moscow and kyiv have accused each other since Friday of bombing the Zaporizhia power plant in southern Ukraine. The Ukrainian nuclear agency Energoatom is asking that a “mission of peacekeepers” including specialists be created.
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The site of the nuclear power plant Zaporizhia, in southern Ukraine, is to become a “demilitarized zone”, estimates the Ukrainian nuclear agency Energoatom, Monday, August 8. This plant has been hit twice in just over 24 hours by bombings of which kyiv and Moscow accuse each other.
It’s necessary “remove the occupants from the territory of the power plant”and have a “peacekeeping mission which would also include experts from the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) and other security organizations”, Energoatom director Petro Kotin said in a video posted on the company’s Telegram page. He also accused the IAEA of having “a very weak reaction” since the Russian army seized the site in March.
According to him, the largest power plant in Europe is occupied by “about 500 soldiers and 50 heavy vehicles, tanks and trucks”. The presence of the Russian army on the spot “creates the greatest danger for the future, an accident involving radiation or even a nuclear disaster”. “There is not a single nation in the world that can feel safe when a terrorist state bombs a nuclear power plant,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky reacted in his daily video on Sunday.
The Russian Defense Ministry said on Monday that the latest strike, overnight from Saturday to Sunday, damaged a high-voltage line supplying electricity to two Ukrainian regions. On Saturday, a reactor was shut down after being targeted by strikes. According to Petro Kotin, two Ukrainian employees of the plant were injured in these strikes. UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres stressed on Monday that “Any attack on nuclear power plants is a suicidal thing”.