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Russia and Ukraine blamed each other for fresh shelling near the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant on Thursday, ahead of a UN Security Council meeting to address concerns about the facility’s safety.
Both Moscow and Kyiv said there had been five rocket attacks near the radioactive material storage area at the plant, Europe’s largest nuclear facility that has been the focus of a new round of fighting in recent days.
Ukraine’s nuclear energy agency Energoatom later said fresh Russian shelling took place near one of the plant’s six reactors, causing “a lot of smoke” and “several damage to radiation sensors.”
The Ukrainian factory is under the control of Russian troops, and Ukraine has accused Moscow of deploying hundreds of soldiers and stockpiling weapons there.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned that Russia could trigger “an event more catastrophic than Chernobyl” – a reference to the nuclear disaster in then-Soviet Ukraine in 1986.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres also said in a statement that continued hostilities around the facility could “lead to disaster.”
He urged both sides to “immediately cease” all military activity near the power plant.
The Council is expected to meet at 1900 GMT.
– “State Sponsors of Terrorism” –
The Soviet-era factory in southern Ukraine was seized by Russian forces in early March – shortly after Moscow’s invasion and has been on the front lines ever since.
“Russia has turned nuclear power plants into battlefields,” Zelensky said via video link at a conference of Ukrainian donors in Copenhagen.
He called for tougher sanctions on Russia, calling it a “terrorist state” — the same day Latvian MPs passed a resolution calling Russia a “state sponsor of terrorism.”
The statement said Russia’s actions in Ukraine constituted “targeted genocide against the Ukrainian people” and said the use of violence against civilians should be considered “terrorism”.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitro Kuleba hailed it as a “timely move” and urged other countries to follow suit, while Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova called it “xenophobic”.
Latvia also urged all EU countries to ban tourist visas to Russian citizens, saying the measure should be extended to Belarusians because the Belarusian regime supports the invasion.
– ‘They will go forward’ –
Meanwhile, fighting continues in eastern Ukraine, where Russian-backed separatists have been fighting Ukrainian troops since 2014.
In the bombed-out town of Soledad, the few remaining residents live in underground shelters.
“We hoped for the best, but the results are getting worse every day,” said Svitlana Klymenko, 62, as the relentless shelling outside continued.
“You can’t cook normally here, you can’t wash yourself. How should I feel?” said Oleg Makeev, 59, another man who lives in the shelter.
Mihailo, a 27-year-old soldier with “Freedom” tattooed on one eye, said the army was also “sitting in the trenches”.
“They had a lot of artillery, mortars, we couldn’t react, we had nothing.”
“They’re going to go further,” he said. “We hide more than do anything useful.”
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