The Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, which is under the control of Russian forces, came under attack Wednesday from several Ukrainian kamikaze drones, according to Russian officials.
The press office of the administration of Energodar, the city where the plant is located, said four drones were used, according to RIA News, while a local administrator claimed three were used. Eleven employees of the plant were wounded, with four in serious condition, Vladimir Rogov, a council member for Russia’s Civil-Military Administration in the Zaporizhzhia region, told TASS. He claimed that the drones did not attack the reactor part of the plant.
UKRAINIAN MAYOR SHARES CRYPTIC POST ABOUT DEADLY ‘INCIDENT’ AT RUSSIAN-CONTROLLED PLANT
“According to preliminary information, the UAVs were equipped with warheads with an explosive mass calculated in kilograms in TNT equivalent. The terrorist entity USIL* must be destroyed!” Rogov wrote on his Telegram page. He added a clarification stating that “USIL” refers to the “Ukrainian State of Ivano-Frankivsk and [Lviv],” two western Ukrainian cities, comparing the Ukrainian government to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, or ISIL.
In another Telegram post, Rogov said “Zelensky’s terrorists” carried out the attacks to intimidate the inhabitants of the Zaporizhzhia region, referencing the Ukrainian president.
“This is revenge for the desire of the inhabitants of the region to reunite with Russia,” Rogov wrote. He then posted several images of what were claimed to be parts of the drones used in the attack.
The Ukrainian government has yet to comment on the allegations. The Ukrainian Embassy in the United States did not respond when reached for comment. The U.N. secretary-general’s deputy spokesman, Farhan Haq, said he did not have any first-hand knowledge of the attack at a briefing on Wednesday, according to TASS.
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The largest nuclear power plant in Europe has come under attack several times since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February from Russian and Ukrainian troops. On Monday, exiled Ukrainian Mayor Dmytro Orlov posted a Telegram message in which he cryptically referred to an “incident” that resulted in several Russian soldiers killed and wounded. RIA News claimed that the attack was from a Ukrainian drone that injured 11 plant employees rather than soldiers. Orlov has yet to comment on the newest claimed attack on the Zaporizhzhia nuclear facility.
The plant in southern Ukraine has been transformed into a Russian military base to shield troops and artillery from Ukrainian attacks, according to the Wall Street Journal.
