During the attacks on Ukraine, Russia repeatedly launched drones and missiles on a flight path near the disused nuclear power plant in Chernobyl, increasing the risk of a major nuclear accident, Ukrainian Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko told Reuters, reports TASR on Wednesday.
In a written statement, Kravchenko described previously unannounced Russian military activity near Ukrainian nuclear facilities. On Sunday, April 26, Ukraine will commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Chernobyl accident in 1986.
In addition to the decommissioned Chernobyl power plant, the country has four nuclear power plants, including Zaporizhia – the largest in Europe – which is occupied by Russian forces. They occupied it shortly after the start of the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The Prosecutor General stated that both Chernobyl and the two-reactor Khmelnytsky nuclear power plant in the west of the country have been in the flight path of Russian hypersonic Kinzhal ballistic missiles since the invasion.
They can’t explain the shots
A total of 35 of these missiles were recorded at various distances within approximately 20 kilometers of the Chernobyl or Khmelnytskyi power plants. “Such launches cannot be explained by any military reasons. It is clear that flights over nuclear facilities are carried out solely for the purpose of intimidation and terror,” Kravchenko pointed out. The Russian Ministry of Defense did not respond to a request for a reaction to this article, writes Reuters.
Kinžal is a supersonic air-launched missile that can carry a warhead weighing 500 kilograms. At a speed of 6,500 kilometers per hour, it covers five kilometers in about three seconds.
Kravchenko said that in three cases these missiles fell to the ground during the flight, only about ten kilometers from the Khmelnytsky nuclear power plant. It was not clear why the rockets fell, but the prosecutor said the debris did not indicate that they had been shot down.
They called the attacks irresponsible
The Chernobyl nuclear accident occurred in 1986. After it, radiation spread throughout Europe. The plant’s last functioning reactor was shut down in 2000. Russia occupied it for more than a month during the first weeks of the invasion, when its troops tried to advance on the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, but then withdrew.
“Deliberate overflights (of drones) with explosive warheads over nuclear facilities are, to say the least, extremely irresponsible and indicate a complete disregard for … the safety of civilians not only in Ukraine, but throughout Europe,” Kravchenko warned, according to which the Russian military is likely using Chernobyl as a route for drones to bypass air defenses, which are concentrated mainly around cities and infrastructure.
In February last year, an object identified by Ukraine as a Russian long-range attack drone struck the Chernobyl nuclear facility and breached the radiation shield. At the time, the Kremlin denied responsibility, saying that its forces were not attacking nuclear infrastructure and that Ukraine likely carried out the attack on its own as a “provocation”.
