A Russian drone caused significant damage to the radiation containment shelter at the Chornobyl nuclear power plant overnight, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Friday, an allegation the Kremlin denied.
Zelenskyy and the UN’s energy watchdog both said that radiation levels remained normal after the incident, which came as top U.S., Ukrainian and European officials gathered at the Munich Security Conference to discuss the war in Ukraine.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov dismissed Ukraine’s claim as a “provocation,” saying he did not have precise information on the alleged incident, but that Russia does not attack nuclear infrastructure.
Chornobyl was the site of the world’s worst civil nuclear catastrophe, when one of its four reactors exploded in 1986. That reactor is now enveloped by a protective shelter to contain the lingering radiation.
The last working reactor at Chornobyl was shut down in 2000. Russia occupied the plant and the surrounding area for more than a month during its push toward the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, at the beginning of the invasion.
Overnight strike
The Russian drone struck the shelter of the destroyed power unit at the plant, causing a fire that has since been extinguished, Zelenskyy wrote on the Telegram app.
“According to initial assessments, the damage to the shelter is significant,” he said.
Ukraine’s emergency services spokesperson, Svitlana Vodolaha, said the attack caused damage to the shelter in a couple of areas.
The experts will work on verifying the exact scale of the attack, which took place around 2 a.m. local time, Vodolaha added on a Ukrainian television broadcast.
Andriy Yermak, the Ukrainian president’s chief of staff, posted photographs of the shelter with what appeared to be a small fire near the top of its vast arch.
“The only country in the world that attacks such sites, occupies nuclear power plants and wages war without any regard for the consequences is today’s Russia,” Zelenskyy said.
Dozens of countries help fund shelter
The shelter, known as the New Safe Confinement, is a hulking, arch-shaped steel and concrete structure that was completed in 2019 to cover an earlier Soviet-built version, which had deteriorated.
Zelenskyy told reporters at the Munich Security Conference that the drone flew at a height of 85 metres, which prevented it from being spotted by Ukraine’s radars.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is ruling out any peace deal with Russia that does not involve Ukraine’s direct participation. U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin now say Zelenskyy will have a role in talks after agreeing to discuss ending the war in a recent phone call.
The New Safe Confinement is 108 metres high and 162 metres high long, spans 257 metres and has a lifetime of at least 100 years, according to the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development.
According to the EBRD, the New Safe Confinement cost 1.5 billion euros ($2.26 billion Cdn) and was financed by 45 donor countries and institutions, including Canada.
Yermak said the United States had contributed significant amounts of money and effort to building the New Safe Confinement structure.
“We will provide a lot of information to our American partners today about Russia’s strikes on the Chornobyl nuclear power plant, about how they constantly launch drones over the Chornobyl zone, about the threat of shelter and nuclear security that they pose,” Yermak wrote on Telegram.
“The atmosphere at the moment is that everyone is very angry at this news here in Munich. Not ‘concerned,’ as is often the case, but really angry.”
In 1986, a nuclear accident in Chornobyl, Ukraine, contaminated much of Belarus and other European countries, leading to high rates of cancer. The organization Séjour Santé Enfants Tchernobyl (SSET) helps affected children by bringing them to Quebec for health stays. The program, which aims to reduce the radiation levels
Belarusian children are exposed to, allows them to return each summer until they are 18.
On the conference’s sidelines, Kyiv’s Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha held an urgent meeting with the International Atomic Energy Agency’s director general, Rafael Grossi.
Zelenskyy was to meet on Friday in Munich with U.S. Vice-President JD Vance at a delicate diplomatic moment for Ukraine in its war with Russia. U.S. President Donald Trump is pushing for rapid negotiations and an end to the war, but Ukraine and its European allies are warning against negotiations that only involve the U.S. and Russia.
