MELITOPOL, April 26. /TASS/. Incessant attacks by Ukrainian troops on the territory immediately adjacent to the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) constitutes global terrorism, Yevgeny Balitsky, acting governor of the Zaporozhye Region, said on the 37th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear accident.
"Today is the 37th anniversary of the accident at the Chernobyl [nuclear power plant]. A mournful date for the entire CIS when in a single moment the world found itself on the brink of a nuclear catastrophe, when hundreds of lives were cut short and thousands fell victim to invisible, deadly radiation. Today, the collective West, playing along with the lunatic regime in Kiev, providing Nazified Ukraine with arms and flooding it with ideology, is pushing the world again to the brink of yet another nuclear catastrophe. The incessant attacks on the territory immediately adjacent to the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant is nothing more than global terrorism," he wrote on his Telegram channel on Wednesday.
The official added that such a catastrophe cannot be repeated.
Located in Energodar, the Zaporozhye nuclear facility, with roughly 6GW of capacity, is the largest of its kind in Europe. Russia took control of the plant on February 28, 2022, in the first days of its special military operation in Ukraine. Since then, units of the Ukrainian army have periodically conducted shelling both of residential districts in nearby Energodar and the premises of the nuclear plant itself, by means of drones, heavy artillery and multiple-launch rocket systems (MLRS).
Every year since 2012, Russia has marked April 26 as a day to commemorate first responders who rush to contain accidents involving hazardous radioactive materials and other catastrophes as well as the victims of such incidents.