Zelenskiy says Russian drone damages Chornobyl plant's radiation shield
World
Zelenskiy says Russian drone damages Chornobyl plant's radiation shield
KYIV (Reuters) - Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Friday that a Russian drone had caused significant damage to the radiation containment shelter at the disused Chornobyl nuclear power plant overnight.
Zelenskiy and the UN's atomic energy watchdog both said that radiation levels remained normal after the incident, which came as top US, Ukrainian and European officials gathered at the Munich Security Conference to discuss the war in Ukraine.
Maria Zakharova, spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, accused Zelenskiy of orchestrating a drone attack to coincide with the Munich event as part of a lobbying effort to secure more weapons and money from the West.
Chornobyl was the site of the world's worst civil nuclear catastrophe when one of its four reactors exploded in 1986. That reactor is now enclosed by a shelter to contain the lingering radiation.
Chornobyl's last working reactor shut in 2000. Russia occupied the plant and the surrounding area for more than a month during its push to take the Ukrainian capital Kyiv at the beginning of the invasion.
The drone struck the radiation shelter, causing a fire that was then extinguished, Zelenskiy wrote on the Telegram app.
"According to initial assessments, the damage to the shelter is significant," he said.
Ukraine's emergency services said there were several areas of damage.
Ukraine's SBU security service showed pictures of what it said was the drone, which it said had been carrying a high-explosive warhead.
It said the drone was a Geran-2, the Russian name for the Iranian-designed Shahed-136, and had been intended to hit the reactor enclosure.
