Russian missiles fly over three nuclear power plants in Ukraine, according to Zelensky

The President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, denounced this Wednesday that three cruise missiles launched by Russia have flown simultaneously over power units of three Ukrainian nuclear power plants: Zaporizhia, Khmelnytska and Yuzhnoukrainsk.

Russian troops “launched three missiles against Ukraine so that they would fly directly over the blocks of our nuclear power plants,” the Ukrainian president said in a video message broadcast last night, the local Interfax-Ukraine agency reported.

Zelensky assured that the launches were simultaneous and wondered why this is due and if this action constitutes a threat: “I have no words for this,” he added.

According to him, the actions of the Russian military near the Chernobyl nuclear power plant showed that they do not understand nuclear safety rules.

“It turns out that they don’t understand what Chernobyl is. The Russian troops who tried to attack kyiv through the Chernobyl zone used this closed territory as a military foothold,” Zelensky recalled.

“They set up positions on the ground, where it is dangerous even to stand. They drove armored vehicles into the territory where the radiation-contaminated materials are buried. The amount of radioactive particles there is off the scale,” insisted the Ukrainian president.

In addition, the Russians “destroyed the radioactivity monitoring points, the state control systems at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, looted the analytical nuclear laboratory. They even stole contaminated objects,” Zelensky added.

At the same time, he said that at present, the uninterrupted operation of the stations, including the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant, temporarily occupied by the Russians, can be ensured thanks to the professionalism of the Ukrainian specialists still working there.

Zelensky’s statements come a day after two cruise missiles launched by Russian troops flew low over the Zaporizhia plant in southern Ukraine, considered the largest in Europe, according to the state company that manages it, Energoatom.

These missiles subsequently impacted the city of the same name and a few kilometers from the nuclear facilities, causing at least one death.