A missile has hit a location close to the South Ukraine nuclear power plant Pivdennoukrainsk in Ukraine’s Mykolaiv Region, Ukraine’s President Vladimir Zelensky has claimed on social media.
Located deep inside Ukraine-controlled territory in the south, near the city of Yuzhnoukrainsk, Pivdennoukrainsk NPP has been operating since 1982 and has three VVER-1000 reactors.
Zelensky claims the missile landed some 300 meters from the Pivdennoukrainsk NPP early on Monday morning, causing damage to the facility’s buildings and a short-term power outage that has disrupted power supplies to the grid.
The surveillance footage purportedly showing the strike that Zelensky posted along with photos of broken windows shows a powerful explosion apparently filmed by a malfunctioning digital camera, with frames appearing to be out of order and timestamps that go back and forth.
According to Ukraine’s nuclear operator Energoatom, one of the hydropower units of the Oleksandrivska hydroelectric power station, which is part of the South Ukrainian power complex, shut down during the attack that has also brought down three high-voltage power lines, but all three power units (reactors) are operating normally.
Ukraine’s president said that Russia should be stopped, before it is too late, accusing it of endangering the world.
Previously on Saturday, the heavy Russian fire has damaged equipment and interrupted local water supplies at the Sloviansk thermal power plant located in the eastern Donetsk region and in the area, the head of the Donetsk regional military administration Pavlo Kyrylenko said.
He stressed that Russian forces are trying to cause as much damage as possible to the civilian population by deliberately targeting infrastructure facilities in the region.
Meanwhile, Moscow has dismissed Ukrainian claims that Russian forces committed war crimes in Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region as a lie, pointing out that Kyiv is using the same scenario as in Bucha outside Kyiv.
Following the discovery of a mass grave in the recently recaptured town of Izyum, Ukrainian reports have spread of alleged Russian atrocities that Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov strongly rejected.