Russia and Ukraine continue to trade blame over Sunday’s drone attacks on the Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia nuclear station, which injured three people, one of them seriously.
Rafael Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, on Monday called the attacks “a serious incident” that “cannot happen” again.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Monday called the attacks “a very dangerous provocation” and pinned the blame on Ukraine.
Kyiv dismissed as false Russia’s claims that Ukraine was behind the attacks.
Russian diplomat Mikhail Ulyanov said Monday on the social media platform X that his country had requested an emergency meeting of the IAEA's 35-nation Board of Governors over what Russia alleges were Ukrainian attacks on the power plant.
The Institute for the Study of War, a think tank based in Washington, said Russian authorities are looking “to use Russia’s physical control over the [plant] to force international organizations, including the IAEA, to meet with Russian occupation officials to legitimize Russia’s occupation of the [plant] and by extension, Russia’s occupation of sovereign Ukrainian land.”
An official of the Ukrainian atomic energy company Energoatom told The Associated Press that Russia orchestrated the attack and then slandered Ukraine for it.
The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the record.
This is not the first time the two enemies have traded accusations over attacks on the plant, Europe’s largest nuclear power station.
The IAEA said its experts had confirmed three drone attacks on Sunday but did not apportion blame. But they acknowledged that Russian troops engaged an approaching drone on Sunday before an explosion near a reactor building.
The proximity of the facility near combat zones is making it vulnerable to attacks by both sides, risking a possible nuclear disaster.
Sunday’s attack caused some superficial damage on the top of the reactor’s dome.
In a post Monday on X, Grossi called the attack “a serious incident,” adding that further such attacks could undermine the integrity of the reactor’s containment system.
The IAEA chief said the main reactor containment structures took at least three direct hits.
“This cannot happen,” he said.
Grossi warned both sides that striking the plant could eventually "jeopardize nuclear safety."
Russian attacks across Ukraine
In the Ukrainian-held city of Zaporizhzhia, Russian strikes on Monday killed three people and injured at least eight more, the region’s Governor Ivan Fedorov said.
Separately, authorities reported that four guided bombs had hit the town of Bilopillia in the northern Sumy region, killing one woman and injuring at least three more people. The attack damaged shops and a city council building, the regional administration said.
Eighty percent of Ukraine's conventional power plants and half its hydroelectric plants have been hit by Russia in recent weeks.
"This is the largest attack on Ukraine's energy sector" since the war began, Ukrainian energy minister German Galushchenko told reporters Monday, adding that "the scale and impact of these attacks is much greater" than earlier attacks over the winter from 2022 to 2023 when millions were left without electricity and heating in freezing temperatures.
"We see that Russians modified the weapons," the minister said. He added that they now use Iranian-style explosive drones and missiles that cause more damage.
Before Russia's invasion, Ukraine's power generation was evenly balanced between coal, natural gas and nuclear energy, with a smaller percentage of hydroelectric.
Ukraine’s military said Monday it shot down 17 Russian drones and a Russian guided missile that were involved in overnight attacks targeting multiple Ukrainian regions.
The Ukrainian air force said Russia attacked with 24 drones overall. The 17 intercepted drones were destroyed over the Odesa, Mykolaiv, Kirovohrad, Khmelnytskyi and Zhytomyr regions, the air force said.
Oleh Kiper, the regional governor in Odesa, said four of the drones were destroyed over the southern region, but that the attack damaged a logistics and transportation facility, as well as a gas station.
Kiper said there were no reported casualties.
The latest Russian aerial attacks came hours after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy stressed the need for allies to summon “the political will” to provide Ukraine with air defense systems.
“It is quite obvious that the air defense capabilities available to us in Ukraine are not enough, and this is obvious to all our partners, as well,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly address Sunday. “And the world must finally hear the pain that Russian terrorists are inflicting on Kharkiv, on Kupiansk, on cities in Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, Sumy regions and many other Ukrainian communities.”
Some information for this report was provided by Reuters, The Associated Press and Agence France-Presse.
