War in Ukraine: UN warns that damaging the Zaporizhia power plant would be suicide
Eva Deschamps / August 19, 2022
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned Thursday that any damage to Ukraine's Zaporizhia nuclear power plant would be suicide as Kiev and Moscow accused each other of bombing the site.
We have to tell it like it is: any potential damage to Zaporizhia would be suicide, Guterres said during a visit to Lviv in western Ukraine, again calling for the demilitarization of the plant, which is occupied by the Russian army.
Saying he was gravely concerned about the situation at Europe's largest nuclear power plant, he called for it not to be used for any military operation whatsoever.
An agreement is urgently needed to restore Zaporizhia as a purely civilian infrastructure and to ensure the security of the region, Guterres said.
Moscow and Kiev have blamed each other for the bombing of the nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine, which has been occupied by Russian troops since March, raising the spectre of a major disaster in Europe.
Ukraine has accused Moscow for weeks of storing heavy weapons in the Zaporizhia power plant and using it as a base for strikes on Ukrainian positions. It also claims that Russian forces are firing on the power plant they occupy in order to accuse Kiev of these bombings.
Moscow denied on Thursday that it had deployed heavy weapons in the plant and said it only had units providing security. Russia accuses Kiev of preparing a resounding provocation on the occasion of the visit of the UN Secretary General to Ukraine.
It had previously mentioned Ukrainian drone attacks on the plant, which had caused fires.
To ensure the safety of the site and allow an inspection mission, Antonio Guterres and the United States called last Thursday for the establishment of a demilitarized zone around the plant, a long-standing request from Ukraine.