The Ukrainian regional authority confirmed in a Facebook post that Russian forces had captured the plant and said personnel were monitoring the condition of power units to ensure they could operate safely. Ukraine’s nuclear inspectorate also confirmed Russian troops had “occupied” the facility in southeastern Ukraine.

“The territory of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant is occupied by the armed forces of the Russian Federation,” the agency said.

Earlier, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Moscow of wanting to “repeat” the Chernobyl disaster after he said Russian forces shot at the Zaporizhzhia plant.

He begged world leaders to wake up and prevent Europe from “dying from a nuclear disaster” after the Russian attack.

“No country other than Russia has ever fired on nuclear power units,” he said in a video message released by his office.

“This is the first time in our history. In the history of mankind. The terrorist state now resorted to nuclear terror.”

Nuclear plant spokesman Andriy Tuz earlier told Ukrainian television that shells fells directly on the facility and had set fire to one of its six reactors. That reactor is under renovation and not operating, but there is nuclear fuel inside, he said.

Zelensky spoke with world leaders, including US President Joe Biden and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who called for a halt to fighting at the nuclear plant.

Johnson accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of “reckless actions” that he said “could now directly threaten the safety of all of Europe”.

The British leader will seek an emergency UN Security Council meeting in the coming hours, according to a statement from his office.

In Beijing, China’s foreign ministry urged all sides to ensure the safety of nuclear facilities in Ukraine.

“We will monitor the situation and call on all sides to exercise restraint, avoid escalation and ensure the safety of relevant nuclear facilities,” foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin told a daily briefing.

China has refused to condemn Russia’s attack on Ukraine or call it an invasion.

Russian march on Kyiv gathers pace as Black Sea port Kherson falls

The Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant is home to six Soviet-designed 950-megawatt reactors built between 1984 and 1995, with capacity of 5.7 gigawatts, enough to power more than 4 million homes.

Ukraine’s nuclear facilities have been a main point of concern after Russia’s military invaded the country last week. Ukraine has four active nuclear power plants.

Russia last month also captured the defunct Chernobyl plant, some 100km north of Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv.

On Thursday, the International Atomic Energy Agency passed a resolution urging Russia to “cease all actions” at Ukraine’s nuclear facilities, including the site of the Chernobyl disaster.

A diplomatic source said the resolution at the board of governors of the IAEA passed by a large majority, with 28 countries in favour and only Russia and China voting against.

Senegal, South Africa, Vietnam, Pakistan and India abstained, according to the source.

More than a week into the conflict there has been no sign of Moscow halting its offensive, despite punishing international sanctions, and Zelensky too vowed Russia would face stiff resistance, while calling on the West for more support.

“If we are no more then, God forbid, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia will be next,” he told a news conference, adding that direct talks with Putin were “the only way to stop this war”.

Much of the international community has rallied behind Ukraine since Putin invaded on February 24, making Russia a global outcast in the worlds of finance, diplomacy, sport and culture.

Western analysts say the invading forces have become bogged down – but warn that the early failures could lead to a frustrated Moscow deciding to unleash all its power on Ukraine.

Ukraine warns of radiation spike after Chernobyl seized by Russia

Putin’s comments Thursday did nothing to dispel that fear.

He said Russia was rooting out “neo-Nazis”, adding in televised comments that he “will never give up on (his) conviction that Russians and Ukrainians are one people”.

French President Emmanuel Macron, who spoke to Putin Thursday, believes “the worst is to come”, an aide said.

While a long military column appears stalled north of Ukraine’s capital Kyiv, Russian troops have already seized Kherson, a Black Sea city of 290,000 people, after a three-day siege that left it short of food and medicine.

China’s links to Russia leave it exposed as Ukraine attack backfires, experts say

Russian troops are also pressuring the port city of Mariupol east of Kherson, which is without water or electricity in the depths of winter.

“They are trying to create a blockade here, just like in Leningrad,” Mariupol mayor Vadym Boichenko said, referring to the brutal Nazi siege of Russia’s second city, now renamed Saint Petersburg.

In the northern city of Chernihiv, 33 people died Thursday when Russian forces hit residential areas, including schools and a high-rise block of flats.

And Ukrainian authorities said residential areas in the eastern city of Kharkiv had been “pounded all night” by indiscriminate shelling, which UN prosecutors are investigating as a possible war crime.

Many Ukrainians were digging in. Volunteers in industrial hub Dnipro were making sandbags and collecting bottles for Molotov cocktails as they prepared for an onslaught.

New US-Russia hotline set up to avoid ‘miscalculation’ as Ukraine war rages

The conflict has already produced more than one million refugees who have streamed into neighbouring countries to be welcomed by volunteers handing them water, food and giving them medical treatment.

Both the EU and the United States said they would approve temporary protection for all refugees fleeing the war – numbered by the United Nations at more than one million and counting.

The fear of igniting all-out war with nuclear-armed Russia has put some limits on Western support for Ukraine, though a steady supply of weaponry and intelligence continues.

The main lever used to pressure Russia globally has been sanctions, piled on by the West.

The rouble has gone into free-fall, while Russia’s central bank – whose foreign reserves have been frozen in the West – imposed a 30 per cent tax on all sales of hard currency, following a run on lenders by ordinary Russians.

And Putin’s invasion has seen some eastern European countries lean even harder West, with both Georgia and Moldova applying for EU membership on Thursday.

Agence France-Presse, Reuters, Associated Press and Bloomberg