The Ukrainian military has resumed the shelling of areas surrounding the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant, but has failed to provoke a nuclear emergency, Russian Ministry of Defense spokesman Igor Konashenkov has announced.
"The Kiev regime has resumed its provocations threatening to create a man-made disaster at the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power plant. During the course of the day, shelling attacks were recorded on the dacha village of Volna, and against a thermal power substation in the immediate vicinity of the NPP. In total, 15 shells were fired from the Nikopol area of the Dnepropetrovsk region. Artillery units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine were suppressed by return fire," Konashenkov said in a briefing Saturday.
"The radiation situation at the ZNPP remains normal," the officer added.
The Russian military and Zaporozhye's pro-Russian civilian administration have spent months reporting on the Ukrainian military's shelling of the facility. The ZNPP is the largest nuclear power plant in Europe, and its six reactors ordinarily generate about one fifth of all of Ukraine's electricity.
The plant was forced to shut down its only remaining operational reactor last week after shelling damaged power lines serving it, with the shutdown threatening Ukraine with rolling blackouts.
Also last week, the International Atomic Energy Agency released a much-anticipated report on the security situation at Ukraine's nuclear facilities after inspectors including agency chief Rafael Grossi visited the ZNPP in late August. Although the document mentioned the dangers posed by shelling of the facility 52 times, it curiously failed to assign responsibility for the attacks.
Russian forces took control of the ZNPP and the surrounding area in early March 2022, and Ukrainian artillery units and saboteurs have spent the past six months attacking the facility. However, Western officials and media have refused to admit Kiev's culpability for attacks on the plant, with some blaming "both sides" for the shelling, and others even alleging that the Russian military has been attacking the facility, presumably banking on the hope that the Western public won't bother to look up where the ZNPP is and who controls it.