Russia, Ukraine Blame Each Other Over Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Plant Attack

Kyiv:

Kyiv and Moscow accused one another of placing Europe’s largest nuclear web site on Friday, inflicting a reactor stoppage as three grain ships departed Ukraine beneath a deal to avert meals shortages.

Russian troops have occupied the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in southern Ukraine because the early days of their invasion and Kyiv has accused them of storing heavy weapons there. Moscow, in flip, has accused Ukrainian forces of concentrating on the plant.

“Three strikes have been recorded on the positioning of the plant, close to one of many energy blocks the place the nuclear reactor is situated,” Ukraine’s state-run nuclear energy plant operator Energoatom mentioned in a press release.

“There are dangers of hydrogen leakage and radioactive spraying. The fireplace hazard is excessive,” Energoatom mentioned. It didn’t report any casualties.

It mentioned employees of Russian nuclear operator Rosatom had rapidly left the plant earlier than the assaults, which broken an influence cable and compelled one of many reactors to cease working.

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky in his every day video handle mentioned Russia ought to “take duty for the actual fact of making a menace to a nuclear plant”.

“At this time, the occupiers have created one other extraordinarily dangerous state of affairs for all of Europe: they struck the Zaporizhzhia nuclear energy plant twice. Any bombing of this web site is a shameless crime, an act of terror,” he mentioned.

The Ukrainian overseas ministry earlier mentioned the “attainable penalties of hitting a working reactor are equal to utilizing an atomic bomb”.

The defence ministry in Moscow denied the stories.

“Ukrainian armed models carried out three artillery strikes on the territory of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear energy plant and the town of Energodar,” it mentioned.

The brand new spike in tensions got here as Russian President Vladimir Putin was assembly his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan within the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi.

Putin thanked Erdogan for serving to orchestrate the resumption of Ukrainian grain shipments, the primary of which is because of arrive in Lebanon on Sunday in keeping with Ukraine’s embassy in Beirut.

The Sierra Leone-flagged bulk service Razoni set sail from the Ukrainian port of Odessa on Monday carrying 26,000 tonnes of corn — the primary departure beneath a UN-backed deal, brokered with Turkish assist, to ease the worldwide meals disaster.

Kyiv mentioned one other three ships loaded with grain set sail from Ukraine on Friday, heading for Turkey and markets in Eire and Britain. An extra 13 are ready to depart.

“Deliveries have already begun. I wish to thanks, each for this and for the truth that on the similar time an accompanying choice was made on uninterrupted provides of Russian meals and fertilisers to world markets,” Putin instructed Erdogan in Sochi.

Asli Aydintasbas, a fellow on the European Council on International Relations, wrote in a report final week that the conflict in Ukraine had “restored Turkey’s self-image as a key geopolitical participant” and given Erdogan the next profile than at any time lately.

The Turkish chief needs to translate the success into truce talks in Istanbul between Putin and Zelensky.

– In depth investigations –

Moscow in the meantime introduced on Friday that it was imposing entry bans on 62 Canadian residents together with authorities officers.

The Russian overseas ministry mentioned the checklist included figures identified for “their malicious exercise within the combat towards the ‘Russian world’ and our conventional values”.

In Ukraine, an argument has flared over accusations that it’s violating worldwide legislation and endangering civilians in its combat towards the Russian invasion.

Amnesty Worldwide launched a report on Thursday itemizing incidents in 19 cities and cities the place Ukrainian forces appeared to have put civilians in hurt’s manner by establishing bases in residential areas.

President Zelensky equated the accusations to victim-blaming. In his night handle on Thursday, he mentioned the rights group had sought to supply “amnesty (to) the terrorist state and shift the duty from the aggressor to the sufferer”.  

“There is no such thing as a situation, even hypothetically, beneath which any Russian strike on Ukraine turns into justified. Aggression towards our state is unprovoked, invasive and terrorist,” he added.  

“If somebody makes a report by which the sufferer and the aggressor are supposedly equal ultimately… then this can’t be tolerated.”  

Amnesty mentioned a four-month investigation had discovered that the Ukrainian navy had established bases in faculties and hospitals, and launched assaults from populated areas.

It mentioned the techniques violated worldwide humanitarian legislation and rebuffed criticism of its report.

“The findings… have been primarily based on proof gathered throughout in depth investigations, which have been topic to the identical rigorous requirements and due diligence processes as all of Amnesty Worldwide’s work,” secretary common Agnes Callamard instructed AFP in emailed feedback.

– Counter-offensive –

On Friday, Zelensky’s workplace and native authorities reported in a single day Russian bombardments concentrating on the southern metropolis of Mykolaiv with widely-banned cluster bombs and heavy artillery — wounding 20 individuals, together with a 14-year-old boy.

Mykolaiv is on the principle path to Odessa, Ukraine’s largest port on the Black Sea, and is the closest metropolis to the southern entrance.

A number of missiles struck the town of Zaporizhzhia in a single day and there was heavy bombardment of Ukraine’s second metropolis Kharkiv, within the northeast.

Ukrainian forces are conducting a counter-offensive within the south, the place they declare to have retaken greater than 50 villages beforehand managed by Moscow.

(Apart from the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV employees and is revealed from a syndicated feed.)