MELITOPOL, August 11. /TASS/. The West is spreading fake news about Russia planting mines at the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant, member of the main council of the Zaporozhye Region’s Military-Civilian Administration Vladimir Rogov told TASS.
"Everyone knows very well who is carrying out terrorist attacks on the NPP. It is a rather clear, though sophisticated, information attack on Russia, a bogus story," he pointed out. According to Rogov, a Russian media outlet designated as a foreign agent "published a video evidently made by a military drone controlled by the US, the UK, or - formally - by Ukraine, which showed equipment belonging to the Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Protection Troops moving about the nuclear power plant’s premises, and passed the video as proof of attempts to mine the facility. However, those weapons don’t even have barrels, let alone the ability to plant mines. The media outlet was presented as a Russian one, allegedly telling the truth," the official noted.
When commenting on threats by the head of Ukraine’s Energoatom nuclear power operator, Pyotr Kotin, that power lines supplying energy to the NPP would be destroyed, Rogov emphasized that it would cause a major power surge. "Similar actions led to a disaster at the Chernobyl NPP in 1986, but the Zaporozhye NPP is ten times bigger and more powerful," he added.
The Ukrainian Armed Forces have been repeatedly shelling the Zaporozhye NPP.
The Zaporozhye NPP, the largest in Europe, is located on the shore of the Kakhovka Reservoir in the city of Energodar, Zaporozhye Region. The NPP has six 1000-megawatt VVER-1000 reactors with a total capacity of 6,000 megawatts. The facility currently operates at 70% of its full capacity because of excess electricity production in the liberated areas of the region.