Kyiv and Moscow accused each other of continuing to fire artillery close to Europe’s biggest nuclear power station as international inspectors awaited clearance to visit the site, which is in Russian-occupied territory near the front line in southeastern Ukraine.
Ukrainian officials said on Sunday that Russia’s military had shelled the government-held cities of Nikopol and Marhanets, across the Dnieper river from the Zaporizhzhia atomic power plant, and Moscow’s defence ministry accused Kyiv’s forces of hitting the territory of the facility itself.
Thousands of people were left without power and residential buildings were damaged in Nikopol and Marhanets, but no casualties were reported, said Valentyn Reznichenko, governor of Ukraine’s eastern Dnipropetrovsk region.
Ukrainian atomic energy operator Energoatom said that “due to the presence of the Russian military, their weapons, equipment and explosives at the power plant, there are serious risks to [its] safe operation . . . As a result of periodic shelling, the infrastructure of the power plant has been damaged, there are risks of hydrogen leakage and dispersal of radioactive substances, and the fire hazard is high.”
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Some residents of the government-held city of Zaporizhzhia, about 45km from the plant, have reportedly been given iodine tablets, which block the absorption of radioactive iodine by the thyroid gland. No radiation leak has been detected, but Ukraine has bitter experience of nuclear disaster from the 1986 accident at Chernobyl, north of Kyiv.
Russia has rejected calls from Kyiv, western powers and the secretary general of the United Nations to its remove troops and weapons from the plant and make it a demilitarised zone, insisting instead that its forces are protecting the site from harm.
“The Kyiv regime continues provocations to create a threat of a man-made nuclear disaster at the [plant],” Russian defence ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said on Sunday.
“Over the past day . . . the Ukrainian armed forces twice shelled the territory of the nuclear power plant,” he added, claiming that three shells fell near buildings where nuclear fuel is stored.
Energoatom said that shelling which damaged power lines at the facility last Thursday had disconnected the site from Ukraine’s national grid for the first time in its history. The link was restored a day later, but the incident intensified fears for the safety of the plant and its six reactors, only two of which are now generating electricity.
Russian troops seized the facility shortly after launching their all-out invasion of Ukraine in late February, and oversee its continued operation by Ukrainian technicians.
The International Atomic Energy Agency said last week that it hoped to send an inspection mission to the plant within “days”, but the visit is proving hard to finalise due to political and security complications.
Russia is reportedly unwilling to allow inspectors from the United States and Britain to visit the site, because those countries are strong allies of Kyiv. It is also unclear whether Moscow has dropped a demand that any mission travel to the site via Russia – something Ukraine believes could be perceived as lending legitimacy to the occupation of its territory.
Fighting continued in the partly occupied Donbas area of eastern Ukraine and the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions of the southeast, and Kyiv’s forces said they struck more Russian command posts and supply depots behind the front line.
Ukraine’s hopes of receiving Soviet-made MiG-29 warplanes from neighbouring Slovakia rose on Saturday, when the Nato state signed a deal for Poland and the Czech Republic to guard its skies from September until delivery of US F-14 jets.
“There is a political will, and it makes sense to help those who need help . . . The possibility is on the table,” said Slovak defence minister Jaroslav Nad.
