The fire at Europe’s largest nuclear power plant has been extinguished, Ukrainian emergency services said at 06:20 local time on March 4. It was caused by shelling by Russian forces which had caused a fire in an area close to the heart of the plant.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Moscow of resorting to “nuclear terror” and wanting to “repeat” the Chornobyl disaster after he said invading Russian forces deliberately attacked the nuclear power plant.
The Russian forces initially refused Ukraine’s emergency services access to the fire, but they eventually allowed rescuers to access the site.
“At 06:20 (04:20 GMT) the fire in the training building of Zaporizhzhia NPP in Enerhodar was extinguished. There are no victims,” the emergency services said in a statement on Facebook.
Zelensky had earlier begged world leaders to wake up and prevent Europe from “dying from a nuclear disaster” after Russian forces attacked the continent’s largest plant.
“No country other than Russia has ever fired on nuclear power units,” he said in a video message released by his office.
“This is the first time in our history. In the history of mankind. The terrorist state has now resorted to nuclear terror.”
Zelensky said the troops had knowingly fired on the nuclear facility.
“These are tanks equipped with thermal imagers, so they know where they are shooting,” said Zelensky.
The station at Zaporizhzhia, an industrial city in the southeast, houses six of Ukraine’s 15 reactors.
Ukrainian emergency services had earlier raised alarm that Russian troops were preventing them from reaching the fire at the plant.
Local officials had reassured the IAEA, the UN atomic watchdog, that “essential” equipment at the station was unaffected and radiation levels were normal.
The Zaporizhzhia plant is located in the southern Ukraine steppe on the River Dnipro, around 525 kilometres south of Chornobyl.
“If there is an explosion, it is the end of everything. The end of Europe,” Zelensky warned. “Only immediate European action can stop Russian troops.”
