Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his nightly address that if it wasn’t for the quick work of technicians at the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant on Thursday, the country would be dealing with the “consequences of the radiation accident.”
The nuclear plant was temporarily cut off from the electric grid for the first time on Thursday after Russian shelling sparked a fire at a nearby ash pit that interfered with the plant’s last operational power line, Zelensky said. The Ukrainian president said diesel generators at the facility needed to be activated immediately after the power outage and that if they hadn’t turned on, a nuclear catastrophe would have occurred.
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“The world must understand what a threat this is: If the diesel generators hadn’t turned on, if the automation and our staff of the plant had not reacted after the blackout, then we would already be forced to overcome the consequences of the radiation accident,” Zelensky said Thursday.
“Russia has put Ukraine and all Europeans in a situation one step away from a radiation disaster,” he added.
Zelensky called on the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations’s nuclear watchdog, to “act much faster than they’re acting now” to pressure Russian troops to leave the Zaporizhzhia plant. The facility has been occupied by Russian forces since the early days of Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion.
“Every minute the Russian troops stay at the nuclear power plant is a risk of a global radiation disaster,” he said in his Thursday address.
Zelensky and President Joe Biden discussed the matter on a phone call Thursday that the Ukrainian president described as “very constructive, positive, quite long, and productive.”
In a readout of the call, the White House said the two leaders called for Russia to return full control of the plant to Ukraine and for the IAEA to access the facility.
Biden also congratulated Ukraine on its Independence Day and “reaffirmed the United States’s continued support for Ukraine and provided an update on the ongoing provision of security assistance,” according to the White House.
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Zelensky added that he is “grateful” for Biden’s understanding of the dire situation facing Ukraine and Europe with Russian troops occupying the Zaporizhzhia facility but said that if the IAEA doesn’t immediately access the plant, the situation could become “irreversible.”
“This can be done in a matter of days, before the occupiers bring the situation to an irreversible point,” he said of the IAEA moving into the plant. “And it’s easier to do it now than later, if the wind starts blowing radiation pollution across Europe.”
