Ukraine says Russia considering nuclear plant ‘terror’ attack, Moscow denies it

KYIV - President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Thursday Ukrainian spies had received information showing Russia was considering carrying out a “terrorist” attack at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant involving a release of radiation.

Speaking later, after a meeting of security chiefs and diplomats, the Ukrainian president issued a fresh call to put pressure on Russia to end its occupation of the plant, seized by Russian troops days after the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

The Kremlin dismissed Mr Zelensky’s allegation of an attack on the plant as “another lie”, and said a team of UN nuclear inspectors had visited the plant and rated everything highly.

The general director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mr Rafael Grossi,

spent time at the plant

last week. According to Russian reports, he was due to meet the head of Russia’s nuclear authority, Rosatom, on Friday in Russia’s Baltic enclave of Kaliningrad.

In a video statement on Telegram, Mr Zelensky said Kyiv was sharing the information about the Russian-occupied facility in southern Ukraine with all its international partners from Europe and the US to China and India.

“Intelligence has received information that Russia is considering the scenario of a terrorist act at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant - a terrorist act with the release of radiation,” he said.

“They have prepared everything for this.”

Mr Zelensky did not say what evidence the intelligence agencies based their assertion on.

Each side has accused the other of shelling the six-reactor plant, Europe’s largest. International efforts to establish a demilitarised zone around it have so far failed.

“Unfortunately, I have had to remind (people) more than once that radiation knows no state borders. And who it will hit is determined only by the direction of the wind,” Mr Zelensky said.

In his nightly video address, Mr Zelensky said: “We need the complete de-occupation of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station.

“And anyone who turns a blind eye to Russia’s occupation of such a facility, to Russia’s mining of the territory of the plant, is actually contributing not only to Russian evil but to terror in general.”

The world’s intelligence agencies, Mr Zelensky said, had the means to “send appropriate signals and apply pressure. And this is what is needed.”

Ukraine, then part of the Soviet Union, suffered the world’s worst nuclear accident in 1986, when clouds of radioactive material spread across much of Europe after an explosion and fire at the Chornobyl nuclear power plant.

Mr Zelensky made his statement two days after Ukraine’s military intelligence chief accused Russia of “mining” the pond used to keep the reactors cool at the Zaporizhzhia plant.

Russian forces have occupied swathes of Ukraine’s south and east and Moscow has unilaterally declared them a part of Russia. Moscow plans to conduct elections on the occupied territory there this September. REUTERS