A new video has surfaced online showing Russian military vehicles inside a turbine room connected to a reactor in Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukrainewhere intense bombing has fueled fears of a nuclear disaster.
THE CNN geolocated and confirmed the authenticity of the video, which began circulating on social media on Thursday (18). It is unclear, however, when the video was recorded.
The footage shows one of the six turbine rooms located on the west side of the nuclear power plant, in the southeast of the city of Enerhodar. Each turbine room is connected and built into a large building that houses a nuclear reactor.
The vehicles, which appear to be standard Russian military trucks, are parked at the west end of the ground floor building, just over 130 meters from the reactor.
At least five vehicles – one of which is clearly marked with the pro-war symbol “Z”– are seen in the video, with at least two tent-like structures nearby. There are a number of assorted wooden pallets near the vehicles.
It is unclear from the video whether the pallets and tents are part of the Russian military or are related to the plant’s operations.
Moscow has previously said that the only military equipment at the plant is related to security services. On Thursday, the Russian Defense Ministry said satellite images “show that weapons, especially heavy weapons, are not placed on the territory of this station”.
THE CNN has contacted the Russian Defense Ministry for comment on what is in and around the military vehicles in the turbine room, but has not received a response so far.
Both Ukraine and Russia have accused each other of threats of nuclear terrorism, particularly around the plant.
Kiev has repeatedly accused Russian forces of storing heavy weapons inside the complex and using it as cover to launch attacks, knowing Ukraine cannot respond to fire without risking hitting one of the plant’s reactors. Moscow, meanwhile, claimed that Ukrainian troops are attacking the site.
On Monday, the president of Ukraine’s state-owned nuclear power company, Petro Kotin, said Russia was stockpiling 14 “units of heavy military equipment” in the “first power unit” and “six vehicles” in the ” second engine room”.
Russian military vehicles have not been seen at the nuclear plant since July 24, according to satellite images of the complex provided to CNN by Planet Labs.
It is unclear whether Russian military trucks are being stored inside the turbine room or if they are using it as cover after a Ukrainian military attack on July 19. The attack targeted Russian military teams in three tents just 300 meters from one of the nuclear reactors.
Fears of nuclear calamity
The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the largest in Europe, has been under Russian control since March.
The attacks on the complex, which intensified as the combat blasts in southern Ukraine, have raised concerns about the specter of a nuclear disaster, prompting the United Nations nuclear watchdog and world leaders to demand that a mission be allowed to visit. the location and assess the damage.
But experts on the nuclear issue are keen to defuse some of the more alarmist warnings, explaining that the main threat is closer to the plant itself and does not justify warnings across Europe. Experts are particularly wary of any comparison to the 1986 Chernobyl disaster – the worst nuclear accident ever – a repeat of what is incredibly unlikely, they said.
Artillery fire at the plant in recent weeks has damaged andry storage installation– where barrels of spent nuclear fuel are kept – as well as radiation monitoring detectors, according to Energoatom, Ukraine’s state-owned nuclear energy company.
On August 5, several explosions near the electrical switchboard caused a power outage and a reactor was disconnected from the power grid, according to the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
IAEA chief Rafael Mariano Grossi said last week to the UN Security Council that the situation has deteriorated “to the point of being very alarming”.
Speaking in the city of Lviv on Thursday, UN Secretary-General António Guterres called for the area around the plant to be “demilitarized” and said an agreement was urgently needed to “re-establish Zaporizhzhia as a purely civilian infrastructure and ensure the safety of area.”
“We have to be honest: any potential harm to Zaporizhzhia is suicide,” Guterres said.
Source: CNN Brasil
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