KYIV: Ukraine is targeting Russian soldiers who shoot at Europe’s largest nuclear power station or use it as a base to shoot from, as G-7 nations, fearing a nuclear catastrophe, called on Moscow to withdraw its forces from the plant.
Ukraine and Russia have traded accusations over multiple incidents of shelling at the Zaporizhzhia facility in southern Ukraine. Russian troops captured the station early in the war.
“Every Russian soldier who either shoots at the plant, or shoots using the plant as cover, must understand that he becomes a special target for our intelligence agents, for our special services, for our army,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in an evening address on Saturday.
Zelenskyy, who did not give any details, repeated claims that Russia was using the plant as nuclear blackmail.
The plant dominates the south bank of a vast reservoir on the Dnipro river. Ukrainian forces controlling the towns and cities on the opposite bank have come under intense bombardment from the Russian-held side.
Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak accused Russia of “hitting the part of the nuclear power plant where the energy that powers the south of Ukraine is generated.” “The goal is to disconnect us from the (plant) and blame the Ukrainian army for this,” Podolyak wrote on Twitter. The International Atomic Energy Agency, which is seeking to inspect the plant, has warned of a nuclear disaster unless fighting stops. Nuclear experts fear fighting might damage the plant’s spent fuel pools or the reactors. –Agencies
