Ukraine says nuclear plant next target for Russian ‘terrorist attack’

Kyiv has said the world “can and must act” to ensure Moscow does not intentionally cause a radiation leak at Europe’s biggest atomic power plant in Russian-held southeastern Ukraine, as Ukrainian missiles struck an important bridge serving occupied Crimea.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said his country’s intelligence agencies feared Russia could trigger an emergency incident at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear facility about 140km north of the Russian-controlled Kakhovka dam, which was breached on June 6th causing disastrous flooding downstream on the Dnipro river.

Kyiv says Russian troops blew up the dam to hamper Ukraine’s counteroffensive in the region, and claims they might also cause a disaster at the nuclear plant to try to freeze the conflict if facing defeat. The Kremlin rejects both allegations.

Addressing Ukrainians and “all the people of the world,” Mr Zelenskiy said “another terrorist attack…is being prepared by the Russian occupiers, at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.”

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“A terrorist attack with a radiation leak. They have prepared everything for this. Unfortunately I have repeatedly had to issue reminders that radiation has no state borders. And who it will hit is determined only by the direction of the wind,” he added.

“There should never be any terrorist attacks on nuclear power plants anywhere. This time it should not be like with Kakhovka – the world has been warned, so the world can and must act.”

Kyrylo Budanov, chief of Ukrainian military intelligence, said Russian troops had placed mines at a cooling pond in the facility, which was seized by Moscow’s forces early in their all-out invasion 16 months ago. The plant’s reactors are in near-total shutdown mode after repeated shelling that each side blames on the other.

Russia denied posing any threat to the plant, and said an inspection by a team from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) after the disaster at the Kakhovka dam – which provided cooling water to the facility – had shown the power station to be stable.

“This is yet another lie. There have just been contacts with the IAEA there at the site. There was a very high assessment from the IAEA, they all saw everything they wanted to see,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov. “Our dialogue and co-operation with the IAEA continue and we are in favour of continuing these contacts…Everything else is a lie.”

Ukrainian missiles struck the Chonhar bridge that links occupied parts of Kherson region in southeastern Ukraine with Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula that the Kremlin annexed in 2014.

The rockets punched a hole in the span, which is an important route for Russian weapons and troops travelling to the area to reinforce the positions of Moscow’s military as Ukraine begins its long-awaited counteroffensive.

“Experts and builders from the Rostov region [of Russia] have been dispatched here. As a construction engineer, I can see that regular traffic will be restored in a few days and things will return to where they were before this morning,” said Vladimir Saldo, a Moscow-installed collaborationist official. “A very serious response is coming very soon,” he added, suggesting that Russia could retaliate by striking a bridge linking Ukraine’s pro-western neighbour Moldova with Nato-member Romania.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of Russia’s Wagner mercenary group, launched another broadside at Moscow’s military chiefs, accusing them of “misleading the Russian people” over the state of the war. “Huge chunks [of land] have been handed over to the enemy,” he said on social media. “All this is being totally hidden from everyone. One day Russia will wake up to discover that Crimea too has been handed over to Ukraine.”