U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres has called for international inspectors to be granted access to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant following last weekend's enemy shelling of Europe's largest nuclear power plant, The Guardian reported.
"Any attack on a nuclear power plant is a suicidal thing," Guterres said at a news conference in Japan on Monday, two days after attending a memorial ceremony in Hiroshima marking the 77th anniversary of the world's first atomic bombing.
Guterres said the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) needs access to the plant. "We fully support the IAEA in all its efforts to create conditions to stabilize the plant," Guterres said.
On August 5, the invaders fired rocket and artillery weapons at the nuclear power facility located in temporarily occupied Energodar. The nitrogen-oxygen plant and the combined auxiliary building of the Zaporizhzhia NPP sustained damage.
The Washington-based think tank Institute for the Study of War (ISW) assessed on August 3 that Russian forces likely used the power plant to "play on Western fears of a nuclear disaster in Ukraine in order to reduce the West's will to provide military support for a Ukrainian counterattack." The ISW also stated that Russia "effectively uses the plant as a nuclear shield to prevent Ukrainian strikes against Russian forces and equipment.
As Energoatom previously stated, the Rashists said they were ready to blow up a booby-trapped ZNPP.
"In a statement, the head of the radiation, chemical and biological protection troops from Russia, Major General Valery Vasilyev, who now commands the ZNPP garrison, said that 'here will be either Russian soil or scorched desert.
As you know, we have mined all important facilities of Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. And we do not hide this from the enemy. We have warned them. The enemy knows that the plant will either be Russian or no one else's. We are ready for the consequences of this step. And you, the warriors-liberators, must understand that we have no second choice. And if there is going to be the toughest order - we must carry it out with honor! - he told his soldiers.
Earlier, a spokesman for the press service of the Defense Ministry's Main Intelligence Service, Andrei Yusov, said that the agency had confirmed information about mines planted by Russian troops," Enerhoatom wrote.
