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Ukraine’s state-run atomic energy company said Russian missiles flew at low altitude over Europe’s largest nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine on Tuesday, and reiterated warnings that Russia’s invasion could lead to a “nuclear catastrophe”.
Energoatom issued its latest warning about the risks caused by the war with Russia on the 36th anniversary of the world’s worst nuclear accident at the now defunct Chornobyl plant, in what was then Soviet Ukraine.
The company said cruise missiles had flown over the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant during an air strike which local authorities said hit a commercial building in the city of Zaporizhzhia, killing at least one person.
“Missiles lying at a low altitude directly over the site of the ZNPP (Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant), where there are seven nuclear facilities with a huge amount of nuclear material, poses huge risks,” Petro Kotin, Energoatom’s acting chief, said.
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“After all, missiles could hit one or more nuclear facility, and this threatens a nuclear and radiation catastrophe around the world,” he was quoted as saying in a statement issued by Energoatom on the Telegram messaging app.
Energoatom said Russian troops, who have occupied the plant since March 4th, were keeping heavy equipment and ammunition on the site.
“Thirty-six years after the Chornobyl tragedy, Russia exposes the whole world to the danger of a repeat of the nuclear catastrophe” it said.
Russia did not immediately comment on Energoatom’s statement. It has previously offered safety assurances about Ukraine’s nuclear power facilities since launching what it says is a “special military operation” on February 24th.
Russian troops also occupied the decommissioned Chornobyl nuclear power station soon after invading Ukraine but have since left the site.
Rafael Grossi, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), was due to visit Chornobyl on Tuesday, the anniversary of the explosion and fire there on April 26th, 1986.
Considerable risks
Russia has told the world not to underestimate the considerable risks of nuclear war and warned that conventional western weapons were legitimate targets in Ukraine, where battles raged in the east.
“The risks now are considerable,” foreign minister Sergei Lavrov told Russia’s state television according to a transcript of an interview on the ministry’s website.
“I would not want to elevate those risks artificially. Many would like that. The danger is serious, real. And we must not underestimate it.”
Mr Lavrov had been asked about the importance of avoiding a third World War and whether the current situation was comparable to the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, a low point in US-Soviet relations.
Meanwhile, a sixth package of European Union sanctions against Russia in response to its invasion of Ukraine is expected “very soon”, the bloc’s energy policy chief said on Tuesday.
The exact date of the package is not yet confirmed, and as with the previous rounds of EU sanctions it would need approval from EU countries, EU energy commissioner Kadri Simson told a news conference in Warsaw.
During a visit to Kyiv on Sunday, US secretary of state Antony Blinken and defense secretary Lloyd Austin promised more military aid for Ukraine.
The US state department on Monday used an emergency declaration to approve the potential sale of $165 million worth of ammunition to Ukraine. The Pentagon said the package could include artillery ammunition for howitzers, tanks and grenade launchers.
Moscow’s ambassador to Washington told the United States to halt shipments, warning western weapons were inflaming the conflict.
Mr Lavrov said: “Nato, in essence, is engaged in a war with Russia through a proxy and is arming that proxy. War means war.”
The United States is due to host an expected gathering of more than 40 countries this week for Ukraine-related defence talks that will focus on arming Kyiv, US officials said.
Britain said all tariffs on goods coming into the country from Ukraine under an existing free trade deal will be axed and it would send new ambulances, fire engines, medical supplies and funding for health experts to help the emergency services.
The Russian-backed separatist leader of the Ukrainian breakaway region of Donetsk said on Tuesday that Moscow should launch the next stage of its military campaign in Ukraine after reaching the region’s frontiers.
Denis Pushilin, the leader of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, said on a Russian talk show broadcast online that the next phase of Russia’s military intervention was crucial following security incidents outside the region.
He cited blasts that hit the Moldovan breakaway region of Transnistria bordering Ukraine on Monday, as well as Russian allegations of shelling of its border regions by Ukrainian forces.
“The pace at which the [military] operation reaches our borders is important to us in order to launch its next phase, which is needed after what we witnessed in Transnistria and Russia’s border regions,” RIA news agency quoted Pushilin as saying.
Transnistria
Moldova’s president convened an urgent security meeting on Tuesday after two blasts damaged Soviet-era radio masts in the breakaway region of Transnistria, where authorities said a military unit was also targeted.
The Moldovan authorities are sensitive to any sign of growing tensions in Transnistria, an unrecognised Moscow-backed sliver of land bordering southwestern Ukraine. It is home to about 470,000 people.
Russia has had troops permanently based in Transnistria since the collapse of the Soviet Union. There are currently about 1,500 troops based there. Kyiv fears the region could be used as a launch pad for new attacks on Ukraine.
“In the early morning of April 26th, two explosions occurred in the village of Maiac, Grigoriopol district: the first at 6.40am and the second at 7.05am,” Transnistria’s interior ministry said.
No residents were hurt, but two radio antennae that broadcast Russian radio were knocked out, it said.
Separately, Transnistria’s Security Council reported a “terrorist attack” on a military unit near the city of Tiraspol, Russia’s TASS news agency reported.
It gave no further details.
The incidents followed a number of blasts that local television reported on Monday hit Transnistria’s ministry of state security in the regional capital, Tiraspol. Local officials said the building had been fired on by unknown assailants with grenade launchers.
Moldovan president Maia Sandu on Tuesday called for a meeting of the country’s Supreme Security Council in response to the incidents.
On Monday, the Moldovan government said the Tiraspol blasts were aimed at creating tensions in a region it had no control of.
Last week, a senior Russian military official said the second phase of what Russia calls its “special military operation” included a plan to take full control of southern Ukraine and improve its access to Transnistria.
Stiff resistance
Russia sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine on February 24th in what it called a special operation to degrade its southern neighbour’s military capabilities and root out people it called dangerous nationalists. Ukrainian forces have mounted stiff resistance and the west has imposed sweeping sanctions on Russia in an effort to force it to withdraw its forces.
Russia has yet to capture any of the biggest cities. Its troops were forced to pull back from the outskirts of Kyiv in the face of stiff resistance.
“It is obvious that every day – and especially today, when the third month of our resistance has begun – that everyone in Ukraine is concerned with peace, about when it will all be over,” Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said late on Monday.
“There is no simple answer to that at this time.”
Having failed to take the capital Kyiv, Moscow last week launched a massive assault in an attempt to capture eastern provinces known as the Donbas, which if successful would link territory held by pro-Russian separatists in the east with the Crimea region that Moscow annexed in 2014.
Russia’s defence ministry said its missiles destroyed six facilities powering the railways that were used to deliver foreign weapons to Ukrainian forces in the eastern Donbas region. Reuters could not verify the report.
The head of Ukraine’s state rail company said that one railway worker had been killed and four injured by Russian missile strikes on five Ukrainian railway stations on Monday.
Ukrainian forces have repelled five Russian attacks and killed just over 200 Russian servicemen, said the Ukrainian military command in the southern and eastern sectors.
Five tanks were also destroyed, along with eight armoured vehicles, it said in a statement.
Reuters was not able to immediately verify the reports.
Russian forces were continuing on Monday to bomb and shell the vast Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol where fighters are hunkered down in a city ravaged by a siege and bombardment, Ukrainian presidential aide Oleksiy Arestovych said.
Moscow said it was opening a humanitarian corridor to let civilians out of the plant but Kyiv said no agreement had been reached. – Reuters