Russian forces are preparing to carry out a "false flag" operation at Europe's largest nuclear power plant, Ukraine's military has said, after a drone struck the facility and hiked fears over its fate given its location on the front line of fighting.
Moscow is "preparing to carry out another provocation" at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in the southern Ukrainian city of Enerhodar, Ukraine's General Staff said in a statement on Sunday. This "provocation" would be part of a "false flag" operation intended to blame Ukraine, Kyiv's armed forces said, citing intelligence data.
Newsweek has reached out to the Russian Defense Ministry for comment via email.
The nuclear power plant, which is under Russian control in the southern Ukrainian region, has spent the more than two years of war on the front line. Shelling and drone strikes around the six-reactor facility have raised fears over a possible nuclear accident.
Earlier this month, Russia and Ukraine blamed one another for drone strikes on the site. "For the first time since November 2022, Europe's largest nuclear power plant was directly targeted in military action," the United Nations' nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, said on April 7.
"Such reckless attacks significantly increase the risk of a major nuclear accident and must cease immediately," added IAEA chief, Rafael Mariano Grossi. There was no indication of damage to "critical nuclear safety or security systems at the site," the IAEA said.
"Russia has several times tried to translate on Ukraine responsibility for the use of unmanned to attacks the objects of the nuclear power plant" in the past few weeks, Kyiv's General Staff said on Sunday.
"No one but the Russian terrorists have put the world so close to the verge of a conscious radiation disaster," Kyiv's military said in a statement. Ukraine has "always been responsible" with nuclear safety, it added.
Russian officials have blamed Ukraine for drone strikes and shelling on the facility.
The IAEA said in a separate statement on Saturday that all six reactor units at the plant were now in "cold shutdown" for the first time since late 2022. One of the units was kept in what is known as "hot shutdown" to provide "district heating as well as process steam for liquid waste treatment at the site," Grossi said.
Cold shutdown means there is "an additional response margin of several days" to react if the removal of heat from the unit is interrupted, the IAEA said. The reactor needs less cooling water than in a state of hot shutdown, which was more difficult to provide after the destruction of the Kakhovka Dam in Ukraine's Kherson region, which was destroyed in June 2023, the agency added.
The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this week that Russia plans to bring at least one of the reactors at the plant back online, citing unnamed European diplomats.
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Ellie Cook is a Newsweek security and defense reporter based in London, U.K. Her work focuses largely on the Russia-Ukraine ... Read more
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