Russia now controls Europe’s largest nuclear power plant located in Ukraine’s southern industrial Zaporizhzhia Region after shelling it intensively. Ukraine’s State Inspectorate for Nuclear Regulation said on March 4 that Russia is in control of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant and mans checkpoints around the facility, which has six reactors with a combined capacity of 5,700 megawatts. It is the largest nuclear plant in Europe.
“In normal times it produces one-fifth of Ukraine’s electricity and almost half the energy generated by the country’s nuclear power facilities,” London-based The Guardian writes.
At 6:20 this morning, Ukrainian firefighters extinguished fires very close to the core of the plant after relentless Russian attacks on the facility.
“Russia is the first country in the world to fire at a nuclear plant,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in an early morning video address in which he pleaded with European leaders to intervene.
The plant is located in Enerhodar, situated on the banks of the Dnipro River and Kakhovka reservoir. The city’s mayor said the situation is quiet on the streets but there is no heating in buildings.
Ukrainian authorities warned that any fallout from damage to the plant would affect all of Europe.
Russia’s ongoing war against Ukraine since 2014 massively escalated on Feb. 24 Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin ordered a full-scale of the rest of the country that Moscow doesn’t occupy.
Carnage has been unleashed in civilian areas and infrastructure in major cities and towns due to incessant and indiscriminate shelling which began last week.
