Kyiv and Moscow have blamed each other after a drone hit a protective structure at the Chernobyl atomic power plant in northern Ukraine, the site of the world’s worst nuclear disaster which happened in 1986.
Ukraine said the strike, which left only minor damage and did not raise radiation levels at the decommissioned plant, showed that Russian president Vladimir Putin had no real desire to join a peace process pursued by US president Donald Trump; Moscow, meanwhile, accused Kyiv of carrying out the drone attack to alarm the international community and portray the Kremlin and its military as reckless threats to world security.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) did not apportion blame for the incident, but has repeatedly warned that Europe’s biggest war since 1945 poses a threat to nuclear safety, and has appealed in vain for a security zone to be put in place around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant – the largest in Europe – which has been controlled by Russia’s invasion force since early 2022.
“The only country in the world that attacks such sites, occupies nuclear power plants, and wages war without any regard for the consequences is today’s Russia. This is a terrorist threat to the entire world,” Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Friday as he prepared to meet senior US officials at the Munich Security Conference.