“Any attack on a nuclear plant is something suicidal,” Guterres told a news conference in Japan on Monday, two days after attending a peace memorial ceremony in Hiroshima to mark the 77th anniversary of the world’s first atomic bombing. Guterres said the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) needs access to the plant. “We fully support the IAEA in all its efforts in relation to creating the conditions to stabilize the plant,” Guterres said. Ukraine said fresh Russian shelling on Saturday damaged three radiation sensors and injured a worker at the Zaporizhia power plant, the second strike in consecutive days at the site. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has accused Russia of practicing “nuclear terrorism” that warrants more international sanctions, this time on Moscow’s nuclear sector. “There is no such nation in the world that could feel safe when a terrorist state shoots up a nuclear plant,” Zelensky said in a televised address on Sunday. Russian forces seized the factory in southeastern Ukraine in early March, but it is still operated by Ukrainian technicians. Authorities stationed by Russia in the area said Ukrainian forces hit the site with multiple rocket launchers, damaging administrative buildings and an area near a storage facility. The Russian embassy in Washington also issued a statement reporting the damage. “Ukrainian nationalists launched an artillery strike on the territory of this object on August 5. Two high voltage power lines and a water pipeline were damaged as a result of the bombing. “Only thanks to the effective and timely actions of the Russian military to cover the nuclear facility, its critical infrastructure was not affected,” the embassy said. The head of Zaporizhzhia’s occupation authorities, Evgeniy Balitskyi, said Ukrainian forces were responsible and had “decided to bring the whole of Europe to the brink of a nuclear disaster” by bombing the plant. Ukraine says Russia has turned the plant into a military base, making it extremely difficult to target Russian troops and equipment inside. According to the New York Times, Russia has been using the plant as cover from which to fire on Ukrainian forces since mid-July. Washington-based think tank the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) assessed on August 3 that Russian forces were likely to use the power plant to “play on Western fears of a nuclear catastrophe in Ukraine in an attempt to downplay Western willingness to provide military support to a Ukrainian counteroffensive.” The ISW further said that Russia was “effectively using the plant as a nuclear shield to prevent Ukrainian strikes on Russian forces and equipment.” It was not possible to independently determine which side was responsible for the attack on the power station. IAEA chief Rafael Mariano Grossi warned on Saturday that the latest attack “highlights the very real risk of nuclear catastrophe”. Elsewhere, Russia is building up its positions and numbers on Ukraine’s southern front to prepare for a Ukrainian counterattack and is likely to prepare the ground for an attack, according to British and Ukrainian military officials. “Russian troops are almost certainly massing in the south, either awaiting a Ukrainian counterattack or preparing to attack. “Large convoys of Russian military trucks, tanks, artillery and other things continue to move from Donbass to the southwest,” the UK Ministry of Defense said, confirming earlier claims by Ukraine’s deputy chief of military intelligence. According to a separate source from Ukraine’s military intelligence, Russian forces are causing fire damage along the front lines in the occupied Kherson region to prevent Ukrainian forces from pushing back from their positions and adding more units to attack the Mykolaiv and in southern Dnipropetrovsk, as well as conducting aerial reconnaissance of the area with drones. In the occupied Zaporizhzhia region, the Russians are actively attacking Ukrainian troops while bringing in new units to bolster their numbers, according to the same source. With Reuters
