Zelenskiy accuses Russia of deliberately launching attack that cut Chornobyl power

(Reuters) -Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Wednesday accused Russia of trying to create the risk of nuclear incidents, alleging Moscow had deliberately staged an attack that cut off power to the decommissioned Chornobyl nuclear power station.

Zelenskiy also said Moscow was doing nothing to fix the cutoff of external power to the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, now in its eighth day, and was taking advantage of the "weak" position of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and its Director General, Rafael Grossi.

Ukraine's energy ministry said earlier that Russian attacks had cut power to the Chornobyl station, including a containment unit erected to minimise contamination from the world's biggest nuclear accident in 1986. Energy officials said strikes also cut off power to 307,000 customers in the nearby Chernihiv region.

Zelenskiy said more than 20 Russian drones had been deployed in the attack on the town of Slavutych that cut power to the nearby Chornobyl plant for three hours.

"The Russians could not have been unaware that a strike on facilities in Slavutych would have such consequences for Chornobyl," he wrote on the Telegram messaging app, adding that large quantities of spent fuel remained there.

"And this was a deliberate attack in which they used more than 20 drones, according to preliminary assessments, Russian-Iranian Shaheds."

The IAEA, the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog, issued a statement acknowledging that the plant had experienced "fluctuations" after losing its external power connection, but that alternative lines were used initially and power was later restored.

Russia has not yet commented on the incident.

Ukraine's energy ministry statement made no mention of any possible increased risk of radioactive release as a result of the power cutoff to the defunct Chornobyl plant due to the Russian attacks on Slavutych.

"As a result of power surges, the new safe confinement facility, which isolates the destroyed fourth power unit of the Chornobyl station and prevents the release of radioactive materials into the environment, was left without power supply," the ministry said.

After the Chornobyl station's fourth reactor exploded in April 1986 and spread radioactivity throughout Europe, Soviet engineers hurriedly erected a "sarcophagus" around the reactor.

This was replaced by a new confinement structure in 2016, while the plant's other three reactors were gradually taken out of service.

The plant was briefly occupied by Russian forces at the beginning of Moscow's 2022 invasion of Ukraine. And a Russian drone pierced the confinement structure's roof in February.

FIXING THE EXTERNAL POWER LINE AT ZAPORIZHZHIA

Zelenskiy also again blamed Russia's military for the cutoff of the external power line last week at the Zaporizhzhia plant in southeastern Ukraine.

"And the Russians are doing absolutely nothing to fix the situation or allow Ukrainian specialists to restore the external power supply to the plant," he said.

Russia, he said, was "deliberately creating the risk of radiation incidents, exploiting, unfortunately, the weak position of the IAEA and its Director General, Rafael Grossi, as well as the dispersion of world attention."

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that Russia was doing everything to ensure the Zaporizhzhia plant's safety. He said it had come under repeated fire from Ukrainian forces.

Russia seized the plant in the early weeks of the war and each side regularly accuses the other of endangering nuclear safety.

Zelenskiy on Tuesday had said that the situation at the Zaporizhzhia plant was "critical".

Grossi, head of the IAEA, responded by saying there was no immediate danger from the power cutoff as emergency diesel generators were in operation. But he added that the external lines needed to be fixed.

(Reporting by Ron Popeski and Oleksandr Kozhukhar; Editing by Bill Berkrot and Jamie Freed)