Alexey Likhachev, the Chief Executive Officer of Russia’s Rosatom nuclear agency, warned today that there’s a chance of a nuclear disaster at the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant, which is under control of Russian forces, under the present circumstances. The Ukraine regime has resumed shelling the plant in recent days.
“We are informing the international community that the plant is at risk of a nuclear disaster and Kiev clearly believes that a small nuclear incident would be acceptable,” said Likhachev, reported TASS. “However, radiation won’t ask Kiev what kind of incident it wants. It will be a precedent that will change the course of history forever. So everything possible needs to be done to make sure that no one can even think of damaging the security of nuclear power plants.”
Likhachev’s warning followed a day in which the International Atomic Energy Agency issued not one, but two statements quoting Director General Rafael Grossi refusing to acknowledge that Ukraine is shelling the plant. In the first statement, the agency expressed extreme concern about the renewed shelling of the plant. “Whoever is behind this, it must stop immediately,” Grossi said. “As I have said many times before, you’re playing with fire!” The second statement reported that while there was no radiation leakage, shell impacts came very close to safety and security systems. “Even though there was no direct impact on key nuclear safety and security systems at the plant, the shelling came dangerously close to them. We are talking meters, not kilometers. Whoever is shelling at the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant, is taking huge risks and gambling with many people’s lives,” he said. In both statements, Grossi reiterated his demand for a demilitarized zone around the plant.
Ambassador Mikhail Ulyanov, Russia’s UN envoy to international organizations in Vienna, charged that the resolution passed by the IAEA’s Board of Governors last week, actually has the effect of giving the Kiev regime carte blanche to keep shelling the plant. “Yesterday and today the Ukrainian armed forces undertook heavy shelling of the ZNPP. Looks like they perceived the recent misleading IAEA BoG resolution sponsored by Canada and Finland as a carte blanche for resumption of shelling the biggest nuclear power plant in Europe,” he wrote on his Twitter account. The resolution, TASS notes, demands that Russia stop its activities at Ukrainian nuclear power plants.
