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The risk of disaster at Europe’s largest nuclear plant is “increasing every day”, the mayor of the city where it is located told AFP on Sunday, after Ukraine and Russia exchanged blame for fresh shelling around the facility.
The Zaporizhzhia plant in southeastern Ukraine has been occupied by Russian forces since March, and Kyiv has accused Moscow of basing hundreds of soldiers and storing arms there.
The facility has come under fire repeatedly in the past week, raising the spectre of a nuclear catastrophe.
“What is happening there is outright nuclear terrorism, and it can end unpredictably at any moment,” said Dmytro Orlov, the mayor of Energodar city where the plant is based.
“The risks are increasing every day,” he told AFP by telephone from the Ukrainian-controlled city of Zaporizhzhia.
He said there was mortar shelling on the plant “every day and night”.
“The situation is hazardous, and what causes the most concern is that there is no de-escalation process,” he added.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky previously accused Russia of nuclear “blackmail” and using the plant to “intimidate people in an extremely cynical way”.
He has also said Russian troops were “hiding” behind the plant to stage bombings on the Ukrainian-controlled towns of Nikopol and Marganets.
But pro-Moscow officials in the occupied areas of Zaporizhzhia blamed the shelling on Ukrainian forces.
Missiles fell “in the areas located on the banks of the Dnipro river and in the plant”, said Vladimir Rogov, a member of the Moscow-installed administration, without reporting any casualties or damage.
The river divides the areas occupied by Russia and those under Ukraine’s control.
