A cooling tower at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in southeastern Ukraine caught fire on Sunday evening, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said, accusing Russian forces occupying the facility of setting the fire on purpose.
“As long as Russian terrorists retain control of the nuclear power plant, the situation is not and cannot be normal. Since the first day of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant’s seizure, Russia has been using it solely to blackmail Ukraine, the whole of Europe, and the world,” Zelensky wrote.
Posting a video showing a pall of black smoke coming from one of the power plant’s two cooling towers, Zelensky nevertheless stressed that radiation levels remained normal.
Yevhen Yevtushenko, the head of the Dnipropetrovsk region’s Nikopol district, which faces the Zaporizhzhia Power Plant across the Dnipro River, accused the Russian military of setting fire to a large number of car tyres in the cooling tower.
Russian state media blamed the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) for the fire, which, according to the Moscow-installed communications director of the power plant, had been caused by a Ukrainian airstrike.
Citing Russia’s atomic power agency Rosatom, state-owned news agency RIA Novosti reported that the Ukrainian military had targeted one of the two cooling towers with two drones, causing a fire that was extinguished after several hours.
While nobody was injured, Rosatom said that the alleged strike could be “characterised as an act of nuclear terrorism on the part of the Ukrainian authorities”.
Zelensky said that the Ukrainians were “waiting for the world’s reaction, waiting for the IAEA’s reaction”, adding that “Russia must be held accountable for this. Only Ukrainian control over the Zaporizhzhia plant can guarantee a return to normality and full security.”
The plant, which is Europe’s largest nuclear power facility, has been under Russian control since March 2022.
