The Zaporizhia power plant, the largest in Europe, has been occupied since March 2022 by the Russians. It is located on the south bank of the Dnieper, a river which acts as a natural front line between the belligerents.
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In a statement carried by Russian media, the Russian state nuclear group Rosatom accused the Ukrainian authorities of having carried out a deliberate attack, claiming that the drone was guided by a fiber optic cable, which would completely rule out “the possibility of an accidental strike.
“Today we have come closer to an incident that is likely to affect even those who live well beyond the borders of Russia and Ukraine,” warned Rosatom boss Alexey Likhache.
Rejecting these accusations, the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said in a statement that they lacked “logic”.
“We do not understand why Ukraine would strike its own nuclear power plant located on its own territory, which it itself seeks to take back under its sovereign control,” declared the ministry.
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“We consider these statements as a new disinformation operation carried out by the occupying state,” he added.
According to Rosatom, the strike breached the wall of the engine room, but did not damage the plant’s essential equipment.
Moscow and kyiv regularly accuse each other of running the risk of a nuclear disaster through their attacks, since the capture of the site by Russian forces.
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