The UN’s atomic watchdog chief on Sunday denounced “targeted” strikes at Ukraine’s Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station, calling for a “stop to this madness,” as Kyiv and Moscow traded blame.
“The news from our team yesterday and this morning is extremely disturbing,” International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director-General Rafael Grossi said in a statement on Sunday. “Explosions occurred at the site of this major nuclear power plant, which is completely unacceptable.”
“Whoever is behind this, it must stop immediately,” he said. “As I have said many times before, you’re playing with fire.”
Photo: AP
There were more than a dozen blasts overnight from Saturday to Sunday, some of which a team of experts from the agency on site saw themselves, the IAEA said in a statement.
Speaking to French broadcaster BFMTV later on Sunday, Grossi was clear that the strikes on the plant were no accident, saying: “The people who are doing this know where they are hitting. It is absolutely deliberate, targeted.”
The IAEA plans to send a team of experts to the plant — the biggest nuclear facility in Europe — which is controlled by Russian troops.
Meanwhile, Ukraine on Sunday dismissed Russian accusations that its soldiers had killed Russian troops as they were surrendering, in what Moscow has described as a “war crime.”
Extracts from video footage showed that Russian forces had used a “staged surrender” to open fire on Ukrainian soldiers, said Dmytro Lubinets, the Ukranian parliament’s commissioner for human rights.
“In this case, persons among the Russian servicemen cannot be considered prisoners of war, but are those who are fighting and committing treachery,” he said. “Returning fire is not a war crime. On the contrary, those who want to use the protection of international law to kill must be punished.”
Video footage circulated on Russian social media last week purported to show the bodies of Russian troops killed after surrendering.
Agence France-Presse has not independently confirmed the videos.
A UN spokesperson said on Friday that it was “aware of the videos” and “looking into them.”
In the southern city of Kherson, which Ukrainian troops recently recaptured, residents were facing a fresh challenge after eight months of occupation by Moscow’s troops — Russian artillery attacks.
After Russian shells pounded the industrial area next to their home, setting fire to an oil depot there, Yuri Mosolov and his wife decided it was time to leave.
“After yesterday’s shelling, my wife said: ‘Let’s not take too many risks and go,” Mosolov said.
A carefully planned campaign by Kyiv targeting logistics networks, bridges and pontoon crossings battered Russian supply lines and forced their troops to abandon the city and retreat to the Dnipro’s eastern bank. Now the armies are increasingly engaging in heavy artillery exchanges across the river.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in his daily address, said there had been nearly 400 Russian attacks in the east of the country alone on Sunday.
The toughest battles, he said, were in the eastern Donetsk region — one of those Russia now claims as its own. Fighting was also continuing in neighboring Lugansk.
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