Ukraine says Russia is plotting ‘a provocation’ at nuclear plant, offers no evidence

Ukraine has said that Russian forces would strike the Zaporizhzhia plant and then report a radioactive leak, with the aim of disrupting a Ukrainian counteroffensive
The claim comes as Moscow’s military in Ukraine braces for a looming counteroffensive by Kyiv’s forces

Ukraine war

Associated Press

Published: 12:56am, 28 May 2023

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Ukraine’s military intelligence has claimed, without offering evidence, that Russia is plotting a “large-scale provocation” at a nuclear power plant it occupies in the southeast of the country with the aim of disrupting a looming Ukrainian counteroffensive.

A statement released on Friday by the intelligence directorate of Ukraine’s defence ministry said that Russian forces would strike the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the biggest in Europe, and then report a radioactive leak to trigger an international investigation that would pause the hostilities and give the Russian forces the respite they need to regroup ahead of the counteroffensive.

To make that happen, Russia “disrupted the rotation of personnel of the permanent monitoring mission” of the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that was scheduled for Saturday, the statement said. It did not offer evidence to back up any of the claims.

A Ukrainian soldier jumps off the German self-propelled Panzerhaubitze 2000 artillery near Bakhmut, Donetsk region, Ukraine on Saturday. Photo: AP

The IAEA said in an emailed response to Associated Press that it did not have any immediate comment on the allegations, and Russian officials did not immediately comment on the Ukrainian claims.

The claim mirrors similar statements Moscow regularly makes, alleging without evidence that Kyiv is plotting provocations involving various dangerous weapons or substances in order to then accuse Russia of war crimes.

It comes as Moscow’s military in Ukraine braces for a looming counteroffensive by Kyiv’s forces, which has not started yet but could begin “tomorrow, the day after tomorrow or in a week,” the secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council, Oleksiy Danilov, told the BBC in an interview on Saturday.

The Zaporizhzhia power plant is one of the 10 biggest nuclear plants in the world. It is located in the partially occupied Zaporizhzhia region in southeastern Ukraine. The plant’s six reactors have been shut down for months, but it still needs power and qualified staff to operate crucial cooling systems and other safety features.

Fighting near it repeatedly disrupted power supplies and has fuelled fears of a potential catastrophe like the one at Chernobyl, in northern Ukraine, where a reactor exploded in 1986 and spewed deadly radiation, contaminating a vast area in the world’s worst nuclear disaster.

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Meanwhile, Russia on Saturday reported more attacks on its territory, with drones crashing in its western regions and areas on the border with Ukraine coming under shelling.

Two drones attacked an administrative building of an oil company in Russia’s western Pskov region that borders Belarus, Latvia and Estonia, Pskov Governor Mikhail Vedernikov reported on Saturday. The building was damaged as the result of an explosion, Vedernikov said.

Another drone went down in the Tver region about 150km (90 miles) north of Moscow, local authorities said.

Russia’s Belgorod region on the border with Ukraine on Saturday came under multiple rounds of shelling, killing one person, according to its governor, Vyacheslav Gladkov. In the neighbouring Kursk region, which also borders Ukraine, one person was killed by cross-border mortar fire, its Governor Roman Starovoyt said.

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The British military said on Saturday that Russia’s private military force, Wagner, is withdrawing from areas around the eastern city of Bakhmut that Moscow claims to have captured earlier this month.

Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin earlier this week announced the pull-out, saying Wagner would hand control over the ruined city over to the Russian military. Some were sceptical, however: Prigozhin is known for making unverifiable, headline-grabbing statements on which he later backtracks.

But Britain’s Ministry of Defence said in a series of tweets on Saturday that Wagner fighters “have likely started to withdraw from some of their positions” around Bakhmut. “The Ukrainian Deputy Defence Minister also corroborated the rotation out of Wagner forces in the outskirts of the town,” the ministry said.

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Meanwhile, Russia will start expelling German diplomats, teachers and employees of German cultural institutions next month – a move that will further enhance tensions between the two countries that have already had very fraught ties since Russia invaded Ukraine early last year.

The German foreign ministry sharply criticised Russia’s move, calling the coming expulsions a “unilateral, unjustified and incomprehensible decision.”

The expulsion will affect several hundred German state employees, including teachers and staff of the Goethe Institute, which promotes German culture and language abroad, daily newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung reported.

The expulsion comes in response to the reduction of the presence of Russian intelligence services in Germany earlier this year.

A street sign in Ukraine’s capital Kyiv calls for enrolment in the Ukrainian military. Photo: Kyodo

“The Russian Foreign Ministry had made public in April its decision to introduce a cap on the number of staff at our missions abroad and at German intermediary organisations in Russia,” according to the German Foreign Office.

The expulsions will lead to “a major cut in all areas of our presence in Russia,” according to the ministry.

Germany did not announce any concrete response to Russia’s expulsions, which are expected to begin next week, but the Foreign Office said that “with regard to the upper limit on the Russian presence in Germany, the German government will ensure that there is a real balance in practice as well.”

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