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進入《TAIPEI TIMES》 Russian seizure of nuclear plant sparks outrage
A woman stands next to rescuers amid the debris of a school destroyed by shelling in Zhytomyr, Ukraine, yesterday. Photo: Reuters
‘RECKLESS ACTIONS’: UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson demanded a meeting of the UN Security Council after attacks that ‘directly threaten the safety of all of Europe’
/ AFP, KYIV
Ukraine yesterday accused the Kremlin of “nuclear terror” and the West expressed horror, after Europe’s largest atomic power plant was attacked and taken over by invading Russian forces.
Blasts lit up the night sky as the plant at Zaporizhzhia came under shell fire, while Russian troops advanced in southern Ukraine and bombarded several cities elsewhere.
Ukrainian firefighters said they were prevented from accessing the site initially, before they were able to douse a blaze at a training facility on the site.
The six reactors, which can power enough energy for 4 million homes, were apparently undamaged and international monitors reported no spike in radiation.
The attack, which Kyiv’s nuclear operator Energoatom said killed three Ukrainian soldiers, was slammed in Washington, London and other Western capitals as utterly irresponsible.
“We survived a night that could have stopped the story, the history of Ukraine, the history of Europe,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said.
An explosion at Zaporizhzhia would have equaled “six Chernobyls,” he said, referring to the plant in Ukraine that was the site of the world’s worst nuclear disaster in 1986.
“Russian tank commanders knew what they were firing at,” Zelenskiy said, adding that “the terrorist state now resorted to nuclear terror.”
For its part, Moscow said the attack on Zaporizhzhia was staged by “Ukrainian sabotage groups with the participation of foreign mercenaries.”
“The goal of the provocation at the nuclear station was to try to accuse Russia of creating a radioactive flash point,” Russian Ministry of Defense spokesman Igor Konashenkov said.
“This shows the Kyiv regime’s criminal plan,” he said, adding that the plant had been secured by Russian troops and was functioning normally.
After telephoning Zelenskiy during the night, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson demanded an urgent meeting of the UN Security Council.
He accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of “reckless actions” that “could now directly threaten the safety of all of Europe,” and pressed anew for a ceasefire.
Putin has been unrepentant about an offensive that has cast Russia into the economic, sporting and cultural equivalent of exile to Siberia.
He on Thursday said that the invasion was going “strictly according to schedule, according to plan” in its aim of driving out the “neo-Nazis” in Kyiv led by Zelenskiy — who is Jewish.
Addressing security chiefs in televised comments, Putin added that he would never abandon his conviction “that Russians and Ukrainians are one people.”
French President Emmanuel Macron, after speaking to Putin on Thursday, said that “the worst is to come,” an aide quoted him as saying.
Ukrainian leaders warn that Russia, with its invasion bogged down north of Kyiv, is bent on reprising the horrific tactics that it used to level the Syrian city of Aleppo in 2016. The port city of Mariupol, east of Kherson, is cut off without water or electricity in the depths of winter.
Mariupol Deputy Mayor Sergei Orlov told BBC radio that its humanitarian situation was “terrible,” after 40 hours of continuous shelling, including on schools and hospitals.
“Today, Putin style of war is like Aleppo. So Mariupol goes to Aleppo,” Orlov said in English. “I believe that he wants to destroy Ukraine as a nation, and Mariupol is on this way.”
In the northern city of Chernihiv, 33 people died on Thursday when Russian forces hit residential areas, including schools and a high-rise apartment block, local officials said.
新聞來源：TAIPEI TIMES
International Atomic Energy Agency Director-General Rafael Grossi points on a map of a Ukrainian power plant during a news conference in Vienna yesterday. Photo: Reuters
