Russian forces yesterday fired rockets on the Mykolaiv region in southern Ukraine, killing at least one person, as a Russian diplomat called on Ukraine to offer security assurances so that international inspectors could visit a nuclear power station that has come under fire.
The call was made after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Saturday warned Russian soldiers who shoot at Europe’s largest nuclear power station or use it as a base to shoot from that they would become a “special target” for Ukrainian forces.
The Mykolaiv region is just to the north of the Russian-occupied city of Kherson, which Ukrainian forces have vowed to retake. The Ukrainian emergency service said one person was killed in shelling early yesterday of the Mykolaiv regional settlement of Bereznehuvate.
Photo: Reuters
As fighting steps up in southern Ukraine, concern has grown sharply about the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which is held by Russian forces and has been hit by sporadic shelling. Both Ukraine and Russia blame each other for the shelling, which officials say has damaged monitoring equipment and could lead to a nuclear catastrophe.
“Every Russian soldier who either shoots at the plant, or shoots using the plant as cover, must understand that he becomes a special target for our intelligence agents, for our special services, for our army,” Zelenskiy said in an evening address on Saturday.
Zelenskiy, who did not give any details, again said that he considered Russia was using the plant as nuclear blackmail.
Russian envoy to the International Atomic Energy Agency Mikhail Ulyanov called on Ukraine to stop attacking the plant to allow an inspection mission from the agency.
“It is important that the Ukrainians stop their shelling of the station and provide security guarantees to members of the mission. An international team cannot be sent to work under continuous artillery shelling,” he was quoted as saying yesterday by Russian state news agency TASS.
The plant dominates the south bank of a vast reservoir on the Dnipro River. Ukrainian forces controlling the towns and cities on the opposite bank have come under intense bombardment from the Russian-held side.
Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said that Russia was “hitting the part of the nuclear power plant where the energy that powers the south of Ukraine is generated.”
“The goal is to disconnect us from the [plant] and blame the Ukrainian army for this,” Podolyak wrote on Twitter.
Kyiv has said for weeks it is planning a counteroffensive to recapture Zaporizhzhia and neighboring Kherson Oblast, the largest part of the territory Russia seized after its Feb. 24 invasion and still in Russian hands.
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