Western intelligence services have trained Ukrainian saboteurs to carry out provocations at Russian nuclear power plants, Moscow’s permanent representative to the UN, Vassily Nebenzia, has claimed.
The attempts by Ukraine to target nuclear facilities inside Russia are “beyond reckless” and could end up plunging the European continent “into a radiation nightmare,” Nebenzia warned during an unofficial meeting of the UN Security Council on Friday.
The authorities in Moscow “have credible information that Western intelligence agencies, primarily the British MI6, have systematically prepared Ukrainian sabotage and reconnaissance groups to organize provocations at nuclear power plants in Russia.”
Among other schemes, Kiev and its foreign backers were working on an operation to blow up power lines connecting the nuclear plants with the Russian national energy grid, the envoy stressed.
He recalled how throughout the conflict, “representatives of certain countries” had accused Moscow, “contrary to common sense, of destabilizing the security situation around the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP), which is under our control.” The facility was secured by Russian troops in March 2022.
According to Nebenzia, those making such claims “do their best to ignore the obvious fact that regular and reckless attacks against the ZNPP are a deliberate terrorist strategy of Ukraine.”
Moscow and Kiev have repeatedly accused each other of shelling Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, and the Russian Defense Ministry has said that several attempts by Ukrainian assault units to retake it have been repelled. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has confirmed attacks on the ZNPP, but declined to name the responsible party.
"But recent events undermine the arguments of all those who try to shelter the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the case of the ZNPP,” the envoy said, referring to Kiev’s incursion into Russia’s Kursk Region, which began in early August.
"There is irrefutable evidence that Kiev was also plotting to attack the Nuclear Power Plant in Kursk,” with the Ukrainians planning to capture and mine the facility, he stressed.
It is fortunate that the Russian military prevented the Ukrainian forces from reaching the nuclear plant, thus averting a “genuine man-made disaster and a large-scale technogenic catastrophe in Europe,” Nebenzia said.
The Russian envoy has once again called upon international bodies, including the UN and the IAEA, to condemn the “provocative actions” by Ukraine and prevent further attempts to undermine the security of the nuclear sites in Zaporozhye and Kursk.