United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has described the recent artillery and rocket fire around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in central Ukraine as “suicidal.”
“Any attack on nuclear power plants is a suicidal thing,” Guterres told reporters in Tokyo.
“I hope that these attacks will end,” he said, calling on the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to be given access to the plant.
The Zaporizhzhia plant is Europe’s largest and occupies an extensive site on the river Dnipro. It has continued operating at reduced capacity since Russian forces captured it early in March, with Ukrainian technicians remaining at work.
Fears about the security of the plant have been growing since Russian forces seized the site but reached an inflection point last week when shelling damaged a high-voltage power line and forced one of the plant’s reactors to stop operating despite no radioactive leak being detected.
Ukraine’s state energy company, Energoatom, said over the weekend that one worker was injured by Russian shelling around the plant, adding that radiation monitoring sensors were also damaged.
Meanwhile, Russia is blaming Ukraine for the shelling around the plant.
Russian-backed authorities in the nearest city, Energodar, claimed that a Ukrainian missile landed within 400 meters of one of the plant’s reactors. Energodar was seized by Russian forces at the same time as the power plant.
“Tonight, the armed formations of Ukraine struck with a Uragan 220 mm rocket missile cluster rocket,” the local authority said, according to the Russian state news agency RIA Novosti.
“Administrative buildings and the adjoining territory of the dry cask storage facility were damaged by the projectiles.”
CNN cannot verify claims made by either side.
The Russians have been shelling the Ukrainian-held town of Nikopol from positions around the plant.
On Saturday, the IAEA director general, Rafael Mariano Grossi, said he was extremely concerned by the shelling “which underlines the very real risk of a nuclear disaster that could threaten public health and the environment in Ukraine and beyond.”
