MOSCOW, November 5. /TASS/. Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) is conducting sabotage and terrorist activities targeting employees of the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) and continues attacks on its satellite city of Energodar, Chief of Russia’s Radiation, Chemical, and Biological Protection Troops Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov said.

"Meanwhile, attacks on industrial facilities and the satellite city of Energodar, home to the plant’s personnel, continue. Ukraine’s Security Service is carrying out sabotage and terrorist activities, including against the ZNPP and local officials. The city’s residents are living under psychological pressure and blackmail. Threats have been made against the families of the plant’s employees who reside in Kiev-controlled territories," he said.

He recalled that shelling attacks on the nuclear plant by Ukrainian troops had been of little concern for the global community because experts from the University of Cambridge had believed that contamination risks were "relatively low."

"But the radiation situation forecast made by our specialists, later confirmed by European sectoral organizations, showed that radioactive emissions in the event of an accident would affect virtually all of Europe. Only after this, and following the deployment of IAEA experts to the plant, did shelling attacks on it practically stop," he stressed.

According to Kirillov, Ukrainian troops staged 49 artillery and drone attacks on the Zaporozhye NPP’s facilities in 2022. The attacks targeted nuclear reactors, nuclear fuel and waste storage facilities, as well as other critical infrastructure. The plant was disconnected from external power supplies five times after these attacks, which posed the risk of a man-made disaster.