![]() ![]() ![]() Despite the initial fire, no essential equipment was damaged and Ukrainian technicians have continued to operate the complex. ![]() After shelling the facility and causing a fire, Russian troops occupied it and stationed personnel and munitions there, in effect using the nuclear reactors as a shield for their offensive operations. Russia launched its latest invasion of Ukraine on February 24, and on March 4 Russian forces captured the nuclear power plant near Zaporizhzhia. Indeed, Russia’s actions around the Zaporizhzhia plant, and earlier at the Chernobyl nuclear complex, violate Russia’s own formally professed standards, which bar military actions that “may result” in any release of “destructive factors and consequent severe losses among the civilian population.” What Russia is Doing and Why The requirement that it do so is rooted in international humanitarian law, which prohibits attacks against civilian targets and demands “particular care” around nuclear power stations. Russian nuclear reactor meltdown in chernobyl full#In particular, Russia must cease all military operations at or near Ukraine’s nuclear facilities and return full control of the Zaporizhzhia plant to Ukraine. Ukrainian rescuers rehearse for nuclear disaster at Zaporizhzhia, where Russian troops have conducted history’s first armed seizure of an operating nuclear power plant, raising unprecedented, global safety risks. This is undermining global security institutions in which all countries have a stake, and Russia must join the international community in treating nuclear power plants as demilitarized zones. Russia effectively is using the plant at Zaporizhzhia as a pre-positioned nuclear weapon to threaten and intimidate not only Ukrainians but millions of Europeans across a dozen countries. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and occupation of Europe’s largest nuclear power station have triggered the first real-world case of a crisis that security scholars have feared for decades: a threat of radiological disaster from a wartime incursion on an operating nuclear power plant. ![]()
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