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A
building at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant was set ablaze during
intense fighting, Ukrainian authorities said on Friday,
triggering fears of a potential nuclear disaster. The blaze was
later extinguished.
"Russian people, I want to appeal to you: how is this possible?
After all we fought together in 1986 against the Chernobyl
catastrophe," he said in a televised address, evoking memories
of the world's worst nuclear disaster.
"You have to ... take to the streets and say that you want to
live, you want to live on earth without radioactive
contamination. Radiation does not know where Russia is,
radiation does not know where the borders of your country are."
Russia's defence ministry blamed the attack at the site of the
Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant on Ukrainian saboteurs, calling
it a monstrous provocation.
Russian forces that invaded Ukraine last week have already
captured the defunct Chernobyl plant north of Kyiv, which spewed
radioactive waste over much of Europe after an accident there in
April 1986.
Analysts have said the Zaporizhzhia plant is a different and
safer type, but Zelenskiy said that now was not the time to be
silent.
"You have to remember the burning graphite scattered by the
explosion, the victims. You have to remember the glow over the
destroyed power unit, the evacuation," he said.
"How can you forget that? And if you have not forgotten, you
should not be silent."
(Reporting by Natalia Zinets and Pavel Polityuk, Writing by
Alessandra Prentice, Editing by Timothy Heritage)
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