Russia has mined the cooling pond at Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant: Ukraine spy chief

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Kyiv: Ukraine’s military intelligence chief accused Russia on Tuesday of “mining” the cooling pond used to keep the reactors cool at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in Ukraine’s south.

The six-reactor complex, Europe’s biggest nuclear plant, has been under occupation since shortly after Moscow’s forces invaded in February last year.

Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.Credit: AP

“Most terrifying is that the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant was additionally mined during that time … namely the cooling pond was mined,” Kyrylo Budanov, head of the GUR agency, said on television, without providing evidence for his assertion.

Reuters requested comment from the Russian defence ministry.

The two sides have accused each other of shelling the plant and its environs, and international efforts to establish a demilitarised zone around the complex have failed so far.

Ukraine’s Defence Ministry, meanwhile, dismissed as “null and void” a Russian suggestion that it could be building a “dirty bomb”.

The Kakhovka reservoir levels near the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in Southern Ukraine on June 5, 2023, top, and June 13, 2023, bottom. Credit: AP

The ministry said the suggestion, made on Monday by Sergei Naryshkin, the head of Russia’s SVR foreign intelligence service, was first advanced by Moscow last year.

The move was, a ministry statement said, aimed at “diverting attention from the clear defeats by occupation forces at the front and sowing distrust among Ukraine’s Western allies”.

“If Russia is talking about a ‘dirty bomb’, its use by Russia could be a real threat,” the ministry said.

Naryshkin had called on the UN nuclear watchdog and the European Union to investigate the dispatch of “irradiated fuel” from the Rivne nuclear plant in western Ukraine for disposal at a spent fuel storage facility in Chornobyl.

The UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency said it had reported this month on the transfer of spent fuel from Rivne to Chornobyl and taken full account of the material.

Russia on Tuesday struck military and infrastructure targets in Ukraine’s capital Kyiv and across other parts of the country, including western areas far from the front lines, Ukrainian officials said.

President Volodymyr Zelensky praised Ukraine’s air defences for downing more than 30 drones and defiantly said that Ukraine’s forces were destroying Russian forces in the two main theatres of the conflict, the east and south.

His commander of land forces and the deputy defence minister reported successes with a counteroffensive in both areas.

Russia’s Defence Ministry said that Russian forces hit and destroyed eight ammunition warehouses across Ukraine in the prior 24 hours and repelled Ukrainian attacks in three areas.

It said Ukrainian forces had tried to attack the Russian-held eastern city of Donetsk and the southern Zaporizhzhia region, but had been repelled.

Zelensky’s office said drones attacked the Kyiv region in several waves over more than four hours.

Also on Tuesday, Ukrainian forces struck the Russian-controlled town of Nova Kakhovka in the southern Kherson region with drones, killing a woman and wounding four civilians, local Russian-appointed authorities said.

The Russian attacks took place as attention has been focused on Ukrainian actions against Russia’s defensive positions in the south and east – the initial stages of a counteroffensive seeking to push President Vladimir Putin’s troops back from territory seized since the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Kyiv says it has recaptured 113 square kilometres of land and eight settlements from Russian forces. But the latest strikes showed that Russia was capable of waging war beyond the front lines.

In his nightly video address, Zelensky said Ukrainian forces “in the south and east are actively destroying the enemy, physically cleansing Ukraine”.

“A defence against terror means destroying terrorists. And it is a guarantee that the state of evil will never have the opportunity to bring evil to Ukraine,” he added.

General Oleksander Syrskyi, Ukraine’s commander of land forces, said on Telegram that his troops were making progress on the flanks of the shattered eastern city of Bakhmut, which fell to Russian mercenaries last month after months of fighting.

Ukrainian troops, he said, were repelling increasingly intense Russian attacks near Kupiansk in the north-east.

Reuters

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