An advisor to the director of Russia’s Rosenergoatom nuclear power engineering company claimed Tuesday that Ukraine is planning an imminent attack on the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) while Ukraine is accusing Russian forces of plotting to blow up the facility.
The ZNPP is in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia Oblast and has been controlled by Russian forces since March 2022. It has been the scene of fighting throughout the war as Ukraine launched failed attacks on the plant to recapture the facility last fall. At the time, Ukraine blamed shelling on the Russian-controlled plant on Russian forces.
Rosenergoatom advisor Renat Karchaa claimed Ukraine is planning to use a dirty bomb against the ZNPP, the largest nuclear power plant in Europe. “In the nighttime on July 5, Ukrainian troops will try to attack the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant with the use of high-precision long-range weapons and kamikaze drone,” he said, according to the Russian news agency TASS.
“They plan to airdrop bombs stuffed with radioactive waste that were removed from the South Ukraine Nuclear Power Plant to a military airfield in Ukraine. The standby bombing plan provides for the use of a Tochka-U high-precision rocket with a warhead stuffed with radioactive waste,” Karchaa added.
Also on Tuesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky claimed Russian forces planted explosives at the ZNPP. “Now we have information from our intelligence that the Russian troops have placed objects resembling explosives on the roof of several power units of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant,” he said.
The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said in a statement on Facebook that an attack could happen in the “near future” and claimed Russia would make it look like Ukrainian shelling.
Ukrainian officials made similar claims about explosives being planted at the ZNPP in recent weeks, but the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said its experts found no such devices. “IAEA experts have so far found no visible indications of mines or other explosives currently planted at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant, but they still need additional access to carry out further such checks at the site,” the IAEA said Friday.
As Ukraine was accusing Russia of plotting to blow up the ZNPP, US Senators Lindsey Grahan (R-SC) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) introduced legislation on June 22 that would declare Article 5 of the NATO treaty, which outlines mutual defense, would be triggered if Russia destroyed a nuclear facility and radioactive contaminates dispersed into NATO territory.
Source: AntiWar.
