Russia is taking Europe to the brink of a nuclear disaster, Zelensky warns

President Zelensky said Europe narrowly avoided a radiation disaster when electricity to the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant in occupied southern Ukraine was cut for hours owing to Russian shelling in the area.

The Ukrainian leader claimed Russian attacks on Thursday sparked fires in the ash pits of a nearby coal power station, which disconnected the reactor complex — Europe’s largest such facility — from the power grid.

Moscow denied it had started the fires and instead blamed Ukraine. Russian reports said safety systems at the Zaporizhzhya plant were activated after a loss of power was reported across swathes of Russian-controlled territory.

Zelensky said back-up diesel generators ensured power supply that is vital for cooling and safety systems. He praised Ukrainian technicians who operate the plant while being monitored by the Russian military.

“If our station staff had not reacted after the blackout, then we would have already been forced to overcome the consequences of a radiation accident,” he said in an evening address.

 “Russia has put Ukraine and all Europeans in a situation one step away from a radiation disaster.”

Ukrainian media sources published pictures of what they described as a fire started by Russian forces in a forest near Enerhodar, the closest town. Large plumes of smoke were visible in photographs published online, and satellite images confirmed a large blaze close to the nuclear plant’s perimeter.

Energoatom, Ukraine’s state nuclear energy company, said the last two working reactors at the plant shut down after a fire in the ash pits of a nearby coal plant damaged power lines connecting Zaporizhzhya to the electricity grid.

On Friday morning, the company said power had been restored by a repaired auxiliary line from Ukraine’s electricity system, although all six reactor blocks were still disconnected from the grid.

Russia’s defence ministry in Moscow had earlier said Ukraine had shelled the plant, continuing weeks of claim and counter-claim over the facility, first occupied in early March.

Zelensky has in turn accused the Kremlin’s forces of “nuclear blackmail” by storing armoured vehicles and ammunition at the plant, which has six reactors and supplies power to much of southern and central Ukraine.

The United Nations has called for a ceasefire near the plant, warning of the “suicidal” risks of attacking nearby.

Russia has said a meltdown at the plant could be worse than the 1986 Chernobyl disaster and spread radioactive material across eastern Europe as far as Germany.

Experts have said the extent of any fallout could depend on the weather, and that the facility’s fortified enclosures would hopefully help to contain the effects of a meltdown, but warned the risks could still be considerable.

“Anybody who understands nuclear safety issues has been trembling for the last six months,” said Mycle Schneider, an independent policy consultant and co-ordinator of the World Nuclear Industry Status Report.

Paul Bracken, a professor at the Yale School of Management, said the concern was that artillery shells or missiles could puncture the reactor walls and spread radiation around potentially a large area, much like the 1986 disaster involving the Chernobyl reactor.

A failure at the Zaporizhzhya plant could “kill hundreds or thousands of people, and damage environmentally a far larger area reaching into Europe”, Bracken said.

 “Russian Roulette is a good metaphor because the Russians are spinning the chamber of the revolver, threatening to blow out the brains of the reactor all over Europe,” Bracken said.

The plant, occupied by about 500 Russian troops, is still operational and staffed by Ukrainian workers. However, a loss of power to the plant itself could affect their ability to cool nuclear systems and volatile waste.

Russia has already said that some of the plant’s back-up generators have been damaged by purported Ukrainian attacks.

However, The Times has obtained video and witness testimony from inside the plant indicating that Russian forces have staged false-flag attacks to sever the plant’s connection to the Ukrainian electricity grid and erode western support for Kyiv.

In London, the Ministry of Defence published a satellite photograph showing Russian tanks just 60 metres away from one of the Soviet-era plant’s nuclear reactors earlier this week. “Russian troops were probably attempting to conceal the vehicles by parking them under overhead pipes and gantries,” the MoD added.

The MoD warned that Moscow was “probably prepared to exploit any Ukrainian military activity near ZNPP for propaganda purposes” and that the principal risks to the reactor “remain disruption to cooling systems and damages to back-up power supply”.

Last week Igor Kirillov, head of Russia’s radioactive, chemical and biological defence forces, said the plant’s back-up support systems had been damaged as a result of shelling, referring to the diesel generators that pump coolant to the reactors in the event that power to the plant is cut. He added that if the reactor core melted down, radioactive material would cover Germany, Poland and Slovakia.

Kyiv told the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN’s nuclear watchdog, that shelling earlier this week disrupted electricity to the Zaporizhzhya plant for several hours. Rafael Mariano Grossi, the agency’s head, said he hoped to send a mission to the plant within days.

Currently only one of the plant’s four power lines connecting it to the grid is operational, the agency said. External power is essential not just to cool the two reactors still in operation but also the spent radioactive fuel stored in special facilities on site.

Russian forces have killed at least three Ukrainian workers at the plant and detained 26 more during its occupation of the facility, said Dmytro Lubinets, the Ukrainian parliament’s commissioner for human rights.

According to Lubinets, the three workers were killed from beatings or shelling, while Russia accuses the detainees of “passing on information about the movement and location of Russian military equipment” in the region.