A view shows the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in the course of the conflict between Ukraine and Russia outside the Russian-controlled town of Enerhodar in Zaporizhzhia region, Ukraine, August 4, 2022. REUTERS/Alexander Ermochenko
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KYIV, Aug 13 (Reuters) – Ukraine is targeting Russian soldiers who fire on an occupied nuclear power plant in the country’s south or use it as a base for firing, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Saturday.
Ukraine and Russia have traded charges over several recent bombing incidents at the Zaporizhzhia facility, Europe’s largest nuclear power plant. Russian troops captured the station early in the war.
“Every Russian soldier who 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 military Zelenskiy said in an evening speech.
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Zelenskiy, who did not elaborate, repeated accusations that Russia was using the plant as nuclear blackmail.
The G7 group of nations has asked Moscow to withdraw its forces from the power plant.
Ukraine’s defense intelligence agency previously warned of further Russian “provocations” around the plant, while the exiled mayor of the city where the plant is located said it had been subjected to a new Russian bombing.
But local officer stationed in Russia Vladimir Rogov wrote on Telegram that Ukrainian forces were shelling the plant.
Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak accused Russia of “impacting the part of the nuclear power plant where the energy that feeds southern Ukraine is generated.”
“The goal is to disconnect us from the (plant) and blame it on the Ukrainian army,” Podolyak wrote on Twitter.
The defense intelligence agency said Russian troops had parked a Pion self-propelled howitzer outside the nearby town and planted a Ukrainian flag on it.
The agency also said Thursday’s strikes on the plant’s territory, which Ukraine said damaged water pumping infrastructure and a fire station, had been carried out from the Russian-held village of Vodiane, about seven kilometers (4.35 miles) east of the plant. .
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Reporting by Max Hunder and David Ljunggren; Edited by Hugh Lawson and Sandra Maler
Our standards: the Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.