MOSCOW, January 23. /TASS/. The idea to store munitions on the territories of Ukrainian nuclear power plants could only have been thought up in the United States, since the Ukrainian side cannot but see the hazards of such actions, Renat Karchaa, an adviser to the head of Russia’s Rosenergoatom nuclear power engineering company, said on Monday.
He doubted that such an idea could have come from Ukrainian nuclear sector specialists because "such games can lead to a really awful disaster." "Such plans are hatched far from Ukraine. These plans can only originate from the United States because they won’t be affected should anything happen. Only those who don’t care at all about the consequences can take such monstrous steps," he said in an interview with the Rossiya-24 television channel.
The Russian Foreign Intelligence Service said earlier on Monday that Ukrainian troops are storing munitions coming from Western countries, including HIMARS rockets, on the territories of nuclear power plants hoping that Russia, realizing the danger of a nuclear catastrophe, would never target these facilities and if a stray Ukrainian air defense rocket incidentally falls there and causes a blast, it can be blamed on Russia.
Later, adviser to the Ukrainian presidential office chief Mikhail Podoluak said that Kiev had never stored munitions on the territories of nuclear power plants and that the country’s authorities were always open for inspections, including by IAEA experts.