A prominent Russian official and longtime lieutenant to Russian President Vladimir Putin implied that Moscow could authorize the sabotage of European nuclear power plants.
“What can one say,” former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy chairman of Putin’s Security Council, wrote Friday. “Don’t forget that there are nuclear sites in the European Union, too. And incidents are possible there as well.”
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Medvedev rolled that radioactive threat into a diplomatic controversy around the status of Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, a vast facility near Enerhodar, Ukraine, that has been under Russian occupation since March. International anxiety about the security of the plant has soared as the conflict shifts toward the plant. The Russian and Ukrainian forces accuse each other of creating a threat of a catastrophe to use as leverage in the wider war.
“There is no immediate threat to nuclear safety as a result of the shelling or other recent military actions. However, this could change at any moment,” International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Rafael Grossi told the United Nations Security Council on Thursday. “I ask that both sides of this armed conflict cooperate with the IAEA and allow for a mission to the Zaporizhzya nuclear power plant as soon as possible. Time is of the essence.”
Grossi’s presentation before the Security Council followed days of reported shelling in the vicinity of the power plant, alarming detonations that Russian officials blamed on Ukrainian forces. Russian troops have been “using the plant as a military base to fire at Ukrainians, knowing that they can’t and won’t shoot back,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken alleged during an Aug. 1 address to the U.N., although some Ukrainian officials have signaled that they would try to resolve that dilemma.
“The occupiers continue to look for enemies,” Enerhodar Mayor Dmytro Orlov wrote on social media last month. “And, perhaps, they are beginning to realize that the cynical shelling of neighboring settlements, conducted by them from the territory of the nuclear plant, will not pass without a trace for them.”
More recently, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Russia of setting a new low “in the world history of terrorism” through its conduct at the plant.
“Today, another shelling by Russia was recorded on the territory of the plant in the immediate vicinity of the NPP facilities,” Zelensky said Thursday. “No one else has used a nuclear plant so obviously to threaten the whole world and to put forward some conditions. And absolutely everyone in the world should react immediately to expel the occupiers from the territory of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.”
Medvedev reversed the allegation on Friday.
“It seems like Kyiv scumbags and their Western patrons are ready to orchestrate a new Chernobyl,” he wrote, per a translation from the Moscow Times. “They say it’s Russia. This is obviously 100% nonsense even for the stupid Russophobic public.”
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Blinken’s team has called for a “demilitarized zone” around the plant and accused Russia of lying about Ukrainian activity.
“Russia continues to deploy disinformation to distract from the realities on the ground and now claims that Ukraine is culpable for the situation at the Zaporizhzhya facility,” State Department Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Bonnie Jenkins told the U.N. Security Council. “This completely ignores the real issue, which is Russia’s illegal presence at the facility. Russia alone created risks and with it launched a full-scale invasion, and it can eliminate those risks now by withdrawing from Ukraine.”
