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October 2, 2025 — 11.50am
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has accused Russia of trying to create the risk of nuclear incidents, alleging Moscow had deliberately staged an attack that cut off power to the decommissioned Chernobyl nuclear power station.
Zelensky on Wednesday said Moscow was also not taking any action to end an external power outage at the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, now into its ninth day, and was taking advantage of the “weak” position of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
Chernobyl’s containment structure was damaged by a Russian drone earlier this year.Credit: Bloomberg
Zaporizhzhia, Europe’s largest nuclear power station, was captured by Russia during the early days of the war in 2022. Its six nuclear reactors are mostly shut down, but they still require electricity to maintain stability and prevent potential meltdowns.
External power was cut on September 23 during intense fighting in the area, and the site has been running off diesel generators ever since. Power has been repeatedly interrupted at the plant since Russia captured it in 2022, but the latest outage is the 10th and longest-running of the war.
“While there is no immediate danger as long as [the generators] keep working, it is clearly not a sustainable situation in terms of nuclear safety,” IAEA director general Rafael Mariano Grossi said in a statement.
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Zelensky, however, called it “an emergency situation” that was “a threat to absolutely everyone”, and warned that the site’s diesel generators were never designed to operate for so long.
“Russia is … taking advantage, unfortunately, of the weak stance of the IAEA and director general Rafael Grossi, as well as the dispersed global attention. Half-hearted or weak measures will not fix the situation.”
In another development, the US will provide Ukraine with intelligence for long-range missile strikes on Russia’s energy infrastructure, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday, citing American officials, as the Trump administration weighs sending Kyiv powerful weapons that could put more targets in Russia within range.
The United States has long been sharing intelligence with Kyiv, but Wednesday’s report said the new development will make it easier for Ukraine to hit refineries, pipelines, power stations and other infrastructure with the aim of depriving the Kremlin of revenue and oil.
American officials are asking NATO allies to provide similar support, according to WSJ. Reuters could not immediately verify the report.
Chernobyl power cut
Zelensky said more than 20 Russian drones had been deployed in the attack on the town of Slavutych that cut power to the nearby Chernobyl plant for three hours.
Ukraine’s Energy Ministry said that “power surges” after the strikes had left the containment unit, built to minimise contamination from the world’s worst nuclear accident in 1986, without power.
Some 307,000 customers in the nearby Chernihiv region were also left without mains electricity, the ministry said.
The 1986 Chernobyl disaster remains the world’s worst nuclear accident.Credit: Getty Images
“The Russians could not have been unaware that a strike on facilities in Slavutych would have such consequences for Chornobyl,” Zelensky wrote on Telegram, using the Ukrainian form of Chernobyl, adding that large quantities of radioactive spent fuel remained there.
“And this was a deliberate attack in which they used more than 20 drones, according to preliminary assessments, Russian-Iranian Shaheds”, he said.
The IAEA, the UN’s nuclear watchdog, issued a statement acknowledging that Chernobyl had experienced “fluctuations” after losing its external power connection, but that alternative lines were used initially and power was later restored.
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Russia has not yet commented on the incident.
Ukraine’s Energy Ministry statement made no mention of any possible increased risk of radioactive release as a result of the power cutoff at the site.
After the Chernobyl station’s fourth reactor exploded in April 1986 and spread radioactivity throughout Europe, Soviet engineers hurriedly erected a “sarcophagus” around the reactor.
This was replaced by a new confinement structure in 2016, while the plant’s other three reactors were gradually taken out of service.
Russian forces briefly occupied Chernobyl at the beginning of Moscow’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, and a Russian drone pierced the confinement structure’s roof in February this year.
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Zaporizhzhia situation critical
Zelensky also again blamed Russia’s military for the cut-off of the external power line last week at the Zaporizhzhia plant in south-eastern Ukraine.
“And the Russians are doing absolutely nothing to fix the situation or allow Ukrainian specialists to restore the external power supply to the plant,” he said.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that Russia was doing everything to ensure Zaporizhzhia’s safety. He said it had come under repeated fire from Ukrainian forces.
Russia seized the Zaporizhzhia site in March 2022, weeks into its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Fighting, drone attacks and shelling have sporadically taken place in and around the plant, with each side regularly accusing the other of endangering nuclear safety.
Reuters
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