A view of a housing challenge within the ghost city of Pripyat close to Chornobyl’s nuclear energy plant in 2006. Chornobyl’s number-four reactor, in what was then the Soviet Union and is now Ukraine, exploded 26 April 1986, sending a radioactive cloud throughout Europe, turning into the world’s worst civilian nuclear catastrophe.
Sergei Supinsky | Afp | Getty Photographs
Russian forces intentionally struck a storage facility for spent nuclear gas close to Ukraine’s Chornobyl energy plant, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy stated on Sunday, in an “extraordinarily vile” assault that didn’t result in a spike in radiation.
The strike considerably broken a fuel-reception constructing meters away from the place “giant quantities of nuclear materials” are saved, in response to the Worldwide Atomic Vitality Company, which stated it had been briefed by Ukraine.
Kyiv’s state atomic company Energoatom stated no spent gas had been saved within the constructing on the time of the assault. A ensuing fireplace was extinguished, and no accidents had been reported.
Russia has not publicly commented on the alleged strike on the power, which is situated round 15 km (9 miles) from the Chornobyl plant, the location of the world’s worst nuclear catastrophe.
“A particularly important infrastructure facility — and an especially vile Russian strike,” Zelenskyy wrote on X, including that Russia had used a Shahed assault drone.
“As of now, there are not any readings exceeding regular background radiation ranges. However there’s definitely a rise in Russia’s brazenness, which way back went off the charts.”
In an announcement, the IAEA stated a workforce would quickly go to the location “to examine the impression.”
In February 2025, a Russian Shahed drone broken a containment arch over the Chornobyl reactor that was destroyed within the April 1986 explosion and meltdown. Russia, which usually assaults Ukrainian cities and infrastructure with drones and missiles, denied accountability.
Kyiv and Moscow have additionally traded accusations of attacking the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Energy Plant in southeastern Ukraine, Europe’s largest.
