VIENNA, April 8. /TASS/. Russian Permanent Representative to international organizations in Vienna Mikhail Ulyanov stated the resumption of direct attacks on the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant by the Ukrainian armed forces.

"Since November 20, 2022, the Ukrainian armed forces have refrained from attacks on the Zaporozhye NPP within its perimeter. The attacks were aimed at the nearby industrial zone and the city of Energodar, where ZNPP employees and their families live. On April 7, the ZNPP itself again became a target," the diplomat wrote in his Telegram channel.

On Sunday, Ukrainian troops carried out a series of unprecedented strikes on the ZNPP’s premises, wounding three employees and hitting the dome of one of the power units. The facility’s press service specified that the radiation background at the nuclear power plant remains within normal limits.

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). In most cases, air defense systems repel the attacks, although several times shells hit infrastructure facilities and the vicinity of a nuclear waste storage depot. In order to protect the ZNPP against shelling attacks, engineering structures, forming a safety net of sorts, have been built on its premises.