According to the local administration, Russia is said to have thwarted Ukrainian attacks on the nuclear power plant and the nearby occupied city of Enerhodar thanks to its air defenses. Meanwhile, the UN Security Council is meeting for an emergency meeting on Thursday to discuss the situation in the nuclear power plant.
According to Russian information, Ukraine is said to have fired on the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant twice on Thursday. This is reported by the official Russian news agency TASS, citing the local authorities installed by Russia. Reuters was initially unable to independently verify the information.
Warning of possible power failure in the Akw
According to Ukrainian information about cut power lines in the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant, the German Greenpeace nuclear expert Heinz Smital warns of a possible power failure in the plant. “The power supply is the lifeline of a nuclear power plant, since it has to be cooled even when it is switched off,” Smital told the AFP news agency in Berlin on Thursday. If there is a complete failure of both the grid and backup generators, “a meltdown is almost inevitable,” he warned.
Guterres warned of nuclear catastrophe
In view of the clashes between Russia and Ukraine over the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant, UN Secretary-General António Guterres has warned of a nuclear catastrophe. Before a meeting of the UN Security Council on Wednesday in New York on the situation of Europe’s largest nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine, Guterres expressed “deeply concerned”. “Regrettably, there has been no de-escalation in recent days, but reports of more deeply worrying incidents. If these continue, it could spell disaster.”
The 15 member states of the Security Council want to consult in New York at the request of Russia. Rafael Grossi, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), will report to the Security Council on the safety situation at the power plant, according to his agency. Heavy shelling has been reported from the area for days.
Alongside China, France, Great Britain and the USA, Russia is a permanent member of the Security Council and has veto rights there. According to information from Security Council Presidency circles, the meeting is scheduled to take place on Thursday at 3:00 p.m. local time (9:00 p.m. CEST). China currently holds the presidency.
Selenskyj: Russia is holding Akw hostage
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has warned the international community of a new nuclear disaster similar to that of Chernobyl in 1986. Russia is a terrorist state that is holding the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant hostage and using it for blackmail, he said on Thursday via video link at the start of a donor conference on Ukraine in Copenhagen. Today, Russia is even more cynical and even more dangerous than the Soviet Union, which once wanted to keep the Chernobyl nuclear disaster a secret.
“We have to protect Europe from this threat,” Zelenskyy said. Zaporizhia is not only the largest nuclear power plant in Europe, but also one of the largest in the world. The reaction to the Russian actions must be comprehensive. Ukraine needs maximum armament and ammunition for defense. “Nobody needs new catastrophes,” said Zelenskyj. The donor conference #CopenhagenUkraine on Thursday was supposed to be about weapons, the training of soldiers and help with demining Ukraine.
Located in the south of Ukraine, the plant is the largest nuclear power plant in Europe and has six of the 15 Ukrainian nuclear reactors. According to Ukrainian information, two of these are currently connected to the power grid. The power plant has been occupied by the Russian army since early March and is not far from the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia annexed in 2014.
According to Ukrainian authorities, Russia has meanwhile launched massive fire on eastern Ukraine. On Thursday night, 120 rockets hit the area around the city of Nikopol. The governor of Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region, Valentyn Resnichenko, said that three people were killed and seven wounded in the shelling. Russia has been trying for weeks to gain control of the entire Donbass region in eastern Ukraine.
While Russian troops already control the region around the city of Luhansk, Russian troops are increasingly attacking in the Donetsk district. There is also said to be heavy fighting for the eastern Ukrainian city of Pisky. An official of the Russian-backed Donetsk People’s Republic said the site, ten kilometers northwest of the provincial capital of the same name, is controlled by Russian and separatist forces. Ukrainian officials denied that the heavily fortified city, a key to Donetsk’s defenses, fell.
According to British intelligence experts, Russia can no longer fully fulfill its foreign orders in the armaments industry. “Russia is most likely unable to fulfill some of its armored vehicle export orders,” the Defense Ministry’s daily Ukraine War Intelligence Update said in London on Thursday.
The reason for this is the extraordinary demand for armored combat vehicles for Russia’s own armed forces in Ukraine and the increasing effect of western sanctions, the statement continues. For example, Belarus recently presented details of a battle tank that had been further developed in its own country. Previously, this task had fallen to the Russian state-owned armaments company UralWagonZavod.
According to the British, the reputation of the Russian arms industry abroad has also suffered: “The credibility of many of their weapon systems has been undermined by the connection with the poor performance of Russian armed forces in the Ukraine war,” the statement said.
Source: Nachrichten
