NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!
Dozens of countries including the United States, Japan, the United Kingdom and Turkey called on Russia in a joint statement on Sunday to withdraw its troops from Ukraine’s Zaporizhia nuclear power plant and the surrounding area.
“We call on the Russian Federation to withdraw its armed forces and everyone else immediately [unauthorized] Personnel of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, its immediate vicinity and all of Ukraine, so that the operator and the Ukrainian authorities can resume their sovereign responsibilities,” the countries said.
Ukraine and Russia have blamed each other for the shelling of Europe’s largest nuclear power plant.
FILE – The Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine is the largest nuclear power plant in Europe. (Dmytro Smolyenko/Future Publishing via Getty Images)
Communications lines, radiation monitoring sensors, a nitrogen-oxygen station and other parts of the facility have been damaged by explosions in recent days.
RUSSIAN OFFICIALS INSIST the blasts at the airbase were ‘unintentional’, satellite images show nearly identical craters
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russia of “trying in an extremely cynical way to intimidate people”.
“Any Russian soldier who either shoots at the facility or uses the facility as cover must understand that he becomes a special target for our secret agents, for our special services, for our army,” he said Saturday night. He called the tactic “nuclear blackmail.”
Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Zelenskyy, said Russian forces are targeting the part of the facility “where power is supplied [the] stored south of Ukraine.”
A Russian soldier stands guard in front of the second reactor of the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine, May 1, 2022. (Andrey Borodulin/AFP via Getty Images)
Ukraine’s state-owned nuclear company Energoatom said on Sunday that an employee at the plant was killed by Russian shelling near his home in Enerhodar.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
Russian forces have controlled the plant since early March, but Ukrainian employees have continued operations, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency.
“Any military action that endangers nuclear safety, nuclear safety, must stop immediately,” IAEA Director-General Rafael Mariano Grossi said this week. “These military actions in the vicinity of such a large nuclear facility could lead to very serious consequences.”
Paul Best is a reporter for Fox News Digital. Story tips can be sent to [email protected] and on Twitter: @KincaidBest.