KYIV: Russian engineers have arrived to measure radiation at nuclear plant in Ukraine, the seizure of which during Moscow’s invasion of the country sparked international alarm, officials said.
Russia occupied Zaporizhzhia, Europe’s biggest atomic power plant, after its forces attacked it on 4th March.
Its reactors appeared undamaged after the assault despite a fire that broke out there after tanks bombarded it.
Officials from Russia’s nuclear firm Rosatom arrived at the site on Friday, the Ukrainian nuclear agency Energoatom said in a message on Telegram.
The Russians told Ukrainian personnel they were there “to evaluate the radiation level” and “help to repair the plant” which was hit by shells, Energoatom said.
At the time of the attack, Moscow’s UN ambassador denied that Russia had shelled the plant.
The Ukrainian agency said that the Russians had come directly to the site because Ukrainian personnel had refused to collaborate with them.
It said one of the Russians who arrived at the plant had introduced himself as the new civil and military administrator of the area and declared the plant part of Russian territory, to be run by Rosatom.
With six reactors, Zaporizhzhia can power up to four million homes and produces about a fifth of Ukraine’s electricity. It opened in 1985.
UN cautions of nuclear threat: Earlier, UN warned of a “massive impact” on the rights of millions and cautioning that heightened nuclear threat levels showed all of humanity was at risk.
Speaking before the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, Michelle Bachelet warned that Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, launched over a week ago, “is generating massive impact on the human rights of millions of people across Ukraine.”
“Elevated threat levels for nuclear weapons underline the gravity of the risks to all of humanity,” she added.
Her comments, during an urgent council debate on the Ukraine conflict, came after Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday ordered Russia’s nuclear forces be put on high alert.
Earlier, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accused Western politicians of fixating on nuclear war.
“It is clear that World War Three can only be nuclear,” Lavrov said in an online interview with Russian and foreign media.
“I would like to point out that it’s in the heads of Western politicians that the idea of a nuclear war is spinning constantly, and not in the heads of Russians,” he said.
Moscow has the world’s largest arsenal of nuclear weapons and a huge cache of ballistic missiles which form the backbone of the country’s deterrence forces.
Bachelet’s speech came as UN figures showed the devastating week-old war had already forced more than one million people to flee Ukraine into neighboring nations, with countless others displaced inside the war-ravaged country.
Bachelet said her office had recorded 227 civilian deaths, including at least 15 children, but stressed that the real numbers were likely far higher.
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