The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) raised grave concerns on Saturday about the shelling the previous day at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine, saying the action showed the risk of a nuclear disaster.
Both sides accused each other on Saturday of engaging in “nuclear terrorism”. Ukraine’s state nuclear power company Energoatom blamed Russia for the damage while Russia’s defence ministry accused Ukrainian forces of shelling the plant.
“I’m extremely concerned by the shelling yesterday at Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, which underlines the very real risk of a nuclear disaster,” IAEA director general Rafael Mariano Grossi said in a statement.
Mr Grossi, who leads the United Nation’s nuclear watchdog, urged all sides in the Ukraine conflict to exercise the “utmost restraint” around the plant.
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Shells hit a high-voltage power line on Friday at the facility, prompting its operators to disconnect a reactor despite no radioactive leak being detected. The plant was captured by Russian forces in early March in the opening stage of the war but it is still run by its Ukrainian technicians.
Energoatom said Russia wanted to disconnect the station from the Ukrainian electricity system and cause blackouts in the south of the country. Moscow’s forces, it said, had placed weapons and explosives in two of the power-generating units and mined the shoreline outside the plant.
“It is highly probable that all of this will cause a nuclear and radiation disaster,” it said in a statement on Saturday.
Russia’s defence ministry said damage to the plant had only been avoided thanks to the “skilful, competent and effective actions” of its units.
Mr Grossi said that military action jeopardizing the safety and security of the Zaporizhzhia plant “is completely unacceptable and must be avoided at all costs”.
Meanwhile, Russian forces have begun an assault on two key cities in the eastern Donetsk region and kept up rocket and shelling attacks on other Ukrainian cities, including one close to Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, Ukrainian officials said.
The cities of Bakhmut and Avdiivka had been considered key targets of Russia’s continual offensive across Ukraine’s east, with analysts saying Moscow needs to take Bakhmut if it is to advance on the regional hubs of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk.
“In the Donetsk direction, the enemy is conducting an offensive operation, concentrating its main efforts on the Bakhmut and Avdiivka directions. It uses ground attack and army aviation,” the Ukrainian General Staff said on Facebook.
Russian shelling killed five civilians and injured 14 others in the Donetsk region in the last day, Donetsk governor Pavlo Kyrylenko wrote on Telegram on Saturday, saying two died in Poprosny, and one each in Avdiivka, Soledar and Pervomaiskiy.
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The governor of the eastern Dnipropetrovsk region said three civilians were injured after Russian rockets fell on a residential neighbourhood in Nikopol, a city across the Dnieper River from the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station. The nuclear plant has been under Russian control since Moscow’s troops seized it early in the war.
“After midnight, the Russian army struck the Nikopol area with (Soviet-era) Grad rockets, and the Kryvyi Rih area from barrel artillery,” Valentyn Reznichenko wrote on Telegram.
Ukrainian authorities also said a Russian missile attack overnight damaged unspecified infrastructure in the regional capital of Zaporizhzhia. On Thursday, Russia fired 60 rockets at Nikopol, damaging 50 residential buildings in the city of 107,000 and leaving residents without electricity.
In Ukraine’s south, two civilians were seriously injured on Saturday after Russian forces fired rockets on the Black Sea port of Mykolayiv before dawn, say regional authorities. That followed a Friday afternoon attack on Mykolayiv that killed one person and wounded 21 others.
In the north, Ukraine’s second-largest city of Kharkiv and its surrounding area also came under Russian rocket fire again overnight, say regional governor Oleh Syniehubov. A 18-year-old in Chuhuiv, a town near Kharkiv, had to be taken to hospital on Saturday after he picked up an unexploded shell.
The Chuhuiv and Kharkiv have endured sustained Russian shelling in recent weeks, due to their proximity to the Russian border.
The neighbouring Sumy region, which also borders Russia, has also seen near-constant shelling and missile strikes. Its regional governor said on Saturday the province was hit more than 60 times from Russian territory over the previous day, and one wounded civilian had to be admitted to hospital.
On the ammunition front, Russia has begun using Iranian combat drones in the war, Ukrainian presidential adviser Oleksiy Arestovych said in a YouTube address, adding that Tehran had transferred 46 drones to the Russian army.
Meanwhile, the head of Amnesty International’s Ukrainian branch is leaving the human rights body after the group accused Ukraine’s armed forces of endangering civilians by basing troops in residential areas during the Russian invasion.
Amnesty made the comments on Thursday and Kyiv likened it to Russian propaganda and disinformation.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy accused the group of abetting what he called Russia’s unprovoked attacks on Ukraine. The human rights group, he said, was trying to shift the responsibility from the aggressor to the victim.
Oksana Pokalchuk, national Amnesty leader, said on Facebook late on Friday that the Ukrainian office has consistently noted that the information that Amnesty issued on Thursday should take into account the position of the Ukrainian defence ministry.
“As a result of this, unwittingly, the organisation created material that sounded like support for Russian narratives. In an effort to protect civilians, this study became a tool of Russian propaganda,” Ms Pokalchuk said.
“It pains me to admit it, but we disagreed with the leadership of Amnesty International on values. That’s why I decided to leave the organisation,” she said.
Ukrainian officials have said they take every possible measure to evacuate civilians from frontline areas. Russia denies targeting civilians in what it describes as a “special military operation”. — Reuters
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