KYIV/MOSCOW (Reuters) – New bombardments have targeted the perimeter of the Zaporizhia power plant in southeastern Ukraine in the past 24 hours, Russia and Ukraine said, blaming the strikes on the opposing party.
The Russian Defense Ministry has accused Ukrainian forces of having bombed the area where Europe’s largest nuclear power plant is located three times in the past 24 hours.
“A total of 17 shells were fired, four of which hit the roof of Special Building No. 1, where 168 WestingHouse nuclear fuel assemblies are stored,” the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement. He added that the radioactivity at the site remained normal.
In a statement broadcast on Telegram, the Ukrainian public company Energoatom conversely accused the Russian forces of having targeted the perimeter of the plant. “The damage is being assessed,” she added.
Russia and Ukraine have been accusing each other for several weeks of carrying out bombings near the power plant, the largest in Europe.
Thursday, two of the plant’s six reactors were shut down for safety reasons due to a lack of power to the plant for several hours. The reactors were reconnected to the Ukrainian electricity grid on Friday.
(Report Max Hunder and Reuters, French version Jean-Stéphane Brosse)
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