MOSCOW, August 11. /TASS/. Critically important infrastructure of the Zaporozhye NPP has not been damaged in the shelling by Ukraine’s armed forces and the operations of reactors have not been disrupted, head of Russia’s National Defense Control Center Mikhail Mizintsev said on Thursday.
"On August 11, 2022, the units of the 44th artillery brigade of the Ukrainian army shelled the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant using 152-mm artillery from the direction of the Nikopol populated locality," said Mizintsev who also heads Russia’s Joint Coordination Headquarters for Humanitarian Response in Ukraine.
The military official specified that as a result of strikes, the nuclear station’s own thermal power plant was damaged as well as the equipment of spray ponds of the nuclear reactors’ cooling system. "Only thanks to skilled, trained and efficient actions by the units of Russia’s Armed Forces on protecting the nuclear energy facility, the NPP’s critically important infrastructure was not damaged and the operations of the reactors were not disrupted," he emphasized.
He also noted that this was not the first deliberate shelling of facilities with radiation and chemical risks by the Ukrainian military which creates a real threat to the life and health of thousands of civilians.
"We view these criminal actions by the Ukrainian government as terrorist attacks. This is yet another proof of genocide on the part of the criminal Kiev regime of the residents of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics who fight for their independence from Ukrainian Nazism," the official asserted.
The Zaporozhye NPP, located in the city of Energodar, is controlled by Russian troops. Over recent days, the Ukrainian forces have delivered several strikes on the nuclear plant’s premises, using, among others, drones, heavy artillery and multiple-launch rocket systems. In most cases, such attacks have been deflected by air defense systems, however, hits on infrastructure as well as in the vicinity of a storage facility of radioactive isotopes have been recorded.