“Fighting near a nuclear plant is dangerous and irresponsible,” a US State Department spokesman said Thursday. “We continue to call on Russia to end all military operations in or near Ukrainian nuclear plants and return full control to Ukraine. And we support Ukrainian demands for a demilitarized zone around the nuclear plant.”
Before that, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres made an appeal: he called for all military activities around the plant to be stopped “immediately” and “not to be targeted”. Like Ukraine and the US, he also advocated a demilitarized zone. If the “deeply disturbing incidents” around the nuclear plant continue, they “could trigger a disaster,” Guterres said. At the instigation of Russia, a UN Security Council crisis meeting is due to take place on Thursday on the situation at the nuclear plant.
APA/AFP/Ed Jones Concerns grow over Europe’s biggest nuclear power plant
At the emergency meeting, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Grossi, will inform the 15 member states about the situation of the nuclear plant and will comment on nuclear safety issues. According to the IAEA, he also wants to respond to efforts to send a mission of experts to the nuclear plant “as soon as possible”.
Mutual finger pointing
During the day, the plant came under attack again, with Russia and Ukraine blaming each other for the attack. Ukrainian energy company Energoatom said there had been five Russian attacks near a radioactive substances storage facility. A representative of the pro-Russian authorities in the region, Vladimir Rogov, wrote on the Telegram online service that Ukrainian troops had again bombed the nuclear facility.
Energoatom later wrote that the sensors were damaged in the bombing. This was reported by the French news agency AFP and referred to a Telegram message. The information cannot be verified. “The situation is coming to a head, radioactive substances are in the vicinity and several radiation sensors have been damaged,” he said.
debate
What is needed for peace in Ukraine?
Europe’s largest nuclear power plant
The Zaporizhia nuclear power plant is the largest in Europe. Russian troops took control in March, shortly after starting their war of aggression against Ukraine. A reactor had to be shut down after the attacks over the weekend.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned on Thursday that Russia could cause “the greatest nuclear catastrophe in history” in Zaporizhia. Russia is a “terrorist state” that is taking the nuclear plant “hostage” in the Ukraine war and using it for “blackmail”. Russia, for its part, accuses the Ukrainian army of jeopardizing the safety of the plant with attacks.
Heavy damage in the Russian base of Crimea
Questions continued to be raised on Thursday after a series of explosions that rocked a Russian air base on the Crimean Black Sea peninsula on Tuesday, leaving extensive damage in their wake. Satellite images suggest it was a targeted Ukrainian attack. There are several theories about this – but little information.
Portal Crimea blasts continue to raise questions
International assessments said on Thursday that images from Planet Labs, an American company that operates Earth observation satellites, provided a real first impression of the damage at the Saky base in western Crimea – or a first indication of a possible attack. Ukrainian.
Images show large-scale fires
Satellite images show that there were obviously large-scale fires. The main runways of the military base appeared to be intact, although several burned fighter jets are clearly visible. Visible craters also indicate some form of bombardment.
“Unofficial” reports, according to agency reports on Thursday, said unspecified “partisans” played a role in the blasts. Russia speaks of an explosion in an ammunition depot because fire safety regulations were not observed.