Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that Russia was doing everything to ensure safety at Zaporizhzhia, which he said had come under repeated fire from Ukrainian forces.
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In another development, the US will provide Ukraine with intelligence for long-range missile strikes on Russia’s energy infrastructure, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday, citing American officials, as the Trump administration weighs sending Kyiv powerful weapons that could put more targets in Russia within range.
Washington has long been sharing intelligence with Kyiv, but Wednesday’s report said the new development will make it easier for Ukraine to hit refineries, pipelines, power stations and other infrastructure with the aim of depriving the Kremlin of revenue and oil.
American officials are asking NATO allies to provide similar support, according to WSJ. Reuters could not immediately verify the report.
Chernobyl power cut
Zelensky said more than 20 Russian drones had been deployed in an attack on the town of Slavutych that cut power to the nearby Chernobyl plant for three hours.
Ukraine’s Energy Ministry said on Wednesday that “power surges” after the strikes had left the containment unit, built to minimise contamination from the world’s worst nuclear accident in 1986, without electricity.
The 1986 Chernobyl disaster remains the world’s worst nuclear accident.Credit: Getty Images
Some 307,000 customers in the nearby Chernihiv region were also left without power supplies, the ministry said.
“The Russians could not have been unaware that a strike on facilities in Slavutych would have such consequences for Chornobyl,” Zelensky wrote on Telegram, using the Ukrainian form of Chernobyl, adding that large quantities of radioactive spent fuel remained there.
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“And this was a deliberate attack in which they used more than 20 drones, according to preliminary assessments, Russian-Iranian Shaheds”, he said.
The IAEA, the UN’s nuclear watchdog, issued a statement acknowledging that Chernobyl had experienced “fluctuations” after losing its external power connection, but that alternative lines were used initially and power was later restored.
Russia has not yet commented on the incident.
Ukraine’s Energy Ministry statement made no mention of any increased risk of radioactive release as a result of the power shutdown at the site.
After Chernobyl’s fourth nuclear reactor exploded in April 1986 and spread radioactivity throughout Europe, Soviet engineers hurriedly erected a “sarcophagus” around the ruins.
This was replaced by a new confinement structure in 2016, while the plant’s other three reactors were gradually taken out of service.
Russian forces briefly occupied Chernobyl at the beginning of Moscow’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, and a Russian drone pierced the confinement structure’s roof in February this year.
The Zaporizhzhia site was also seized in the same early stages of the war. Fighting, drone attacks and shelling have continued sporadically in and around the plant, with each side regularly accusing the other of endangering nuclear safety.
