MELITOPOL, May 12. /TASS/. Kiev lies to the global community by pretending it doesn’t want to seize the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant by force, Renat Karchaa, an adviser to the head of the Rosenergoatom concern, told TASS on Friday.

Earlier, Pyotr Kotin, the head of Ukraine's Energoatom, said that the Ukrainian military would bypass the Zaporozhye NPP during its planned counterattack to avoid damaging it. According to him, Kiev plans to encircle the town of Energodar, where the plant is located, and cut the road south to Crimea.

"I would say that Kotin is putting up a front with these statements. The purpose of such statements is obvious to me: to misinform, to disorient us and at the same time to present themselves in the eyes of the world community as good guys who allegedly care about nuclear safety," Karchaa said.

He recalled that until a few months ago, Kiev "considered it normal to shell a nuclear power plant," and in January, in an interview with Bloomberg, Kotin advocated seizing the plant by force. "Now they pretend that nuclear safety is one of their priorities. In fact, the idea of using force against the plant is in the minds and intentions of the Ukrainian authorities and their Western handlers. These people have long ago convinced all of us by words and deeds that for them nuclear safety is nothing more than a beautiful combination of words," the adviser to the head of Rosenergoatom pointed out.

The Zaporozhye NPP, located in Energodar, has six power units with a total capacity of 6 GW. It is the largest nuclear power generating facility in Europe. At the end of February 2022, the facility was taken over by Russian forces. Since then, Ukrainian army units have periodically shelled both residential areas in Energodar and the plant itself using drones, heavy artillery and multiple rocket launchers.