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Russia plans attacks on Ukrainian nuclear power plants, Zelensky warns

Russia plans attacks on Ukrainian nuclear power plants, Zelensky warns

Vaseline 1 month ago



CNN

Russia plans to attack Ukrainian nuclear power plants and disconnect them from the energy grid, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Wednesday, warning that such attacks risk a nuclear disaster.

“Radiation does not respect state borders,” Zelensky said in his speech to the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Wednesday.

Because Russia “cannot defeat our people’s resistance on the battlefield,” Zelensky said Russian President Vladimir Putin is “looking for other ways to break the Ukrainian spirit.”

For a third winter, Russia is stepping up its attacks on Ukraine’s energy network in an attempt to plunge the country into “dark and cold,” Zelensky said.

Zelensky’s speech to the UN came shortly before he was due to discuss his “victory plan” with US President Joe Biden, which is expected to include Kiev’s long-running request to use long-range missiles to strike military targets in Russia.

In his speech, Zelensky recalled the “horrific” moment in the first weeks of the war when Russian attacks on the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant, Europe’s largest, sparked fears among Ukrainians of another Chernobyl-style disaster.

“No one could have known how the Russian attacks on the nuclear facility would end, and everyone in Ukraine was reminded what Chernobyl means,” he said.

Two and a half years later, Zelensky warned that the Russian-held ZNPP “remains at risk of a nuclear incident.” Russia and Ukraine have blamed each other for previous incidents at the factory. According to the World Nuclear Association, Ukraine has three other nuclear power plants.

CNN has previously reported that the risk of a major nuclear incident at the ZNPP is low, as Ukrainian operators put the plant’s reactors into a “cold shutdown” mode in June 2023.

If the plant’s reactors were blown open, the cold reactor would “expose spent fuel to the air, which will disperse some radiation,” William Alberque, director of Strategy, Technology and Arms Control at the International Institute for Strategy Studies, told CNN. .

This would create a radiation zone where “you will have a higher risk of cancer for the next forty years,” but the kind of destruction we saw after the collapse of the active Chernobyl nuclear power plant in 1986 will not happen again.

Rafael Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), visits the Russian-controlled Zaporizhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine on June 15, 2023. (Photo by Olga MALTSEVA/AFP) (Photo by OLGA MALTSEVA/AFP via Getty Images)

Although the risk of a large-scale nuclear incident is low, the threat to Ukraine’s energy system remains high.

“Russia has destroyed all our thermal power plants and a large part of our hydropower capacity,” Zelenskiy said. He said that 80% of Ukraine’s energy system had been disabled by the Russian attacks.

However, Zelensky’s speech lacked any reference to Ukraine’s hopes for permission to use Western weapons to attack targets deep inside Russia.

Before traveling to the US, Zelensky told CNN that Ukraine’s request was an important part of his “victory plan.”

Radek Sikorski, Poland’s Foreign Minister, told CNN that it is crucial that Ukraine’s request is granted. He recalled a recent incident in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, in which an entire family was wiped out by a Russian missile attack.

“The missile that killed that family was launched from a Russian bomber flying over Russian territory from a Russian airport. Give me one reason why Ukraine wouldn’t be able to take out that bomber and that airport,” Sikorski said.

“The victim of aggression has the right to defend himself even on the territory of the aggressor,” he added, saying “we make these arguments to the US.”