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Nuclear plant still in crossfire

Ukraine says it is targeting Russians shooting at, or from, large nuclear facility

Reuters

KYIV, UKRAINE • Ukraine is targeting Russian soldiers who shoot at an occupied nuclear plant in the south of the country or use it as a base to shoot from, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Saturday.

Ukraine and Russia have traded accusations over multiple recent incidents of shelling at the Zaporizhzhia facility, Europe’s largest nuclear power plant. Russian troops captured the station early in the war.

“Every Russian soldier who either shoots at the plant, or shoots using the plant as cover, must understand that he becomes a special target for our intelligence agents, for our special services, for our army,” Zelensky said in an evening address.

Zelensky, who did not give details, repeated accusations that Russia was using the plant as nuclear blackmail.

The G-7 group of nations have called on Moscow to withdraw its forces from the power station.

Ukraine’s defense intelligence agency earlier warned of fresh Russian “provocations” around the plant while the exiled mayor of the town where the plant is located said it had come under fresh Russian shelling.

But Russian-installed official Vladimir Rogov wrote on Telegram that Ukrainian forces were shelling the plant.

Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak accused Russia of “hitting the part of the nuclear power plant where the energy that powers the south of Ukraine is generated.”

“The goal is to disconnect us from the (plant) and blame the Ukrainian army for this,” Podolyak wrote on Twitter.

The defense intelligence agency said Russian troops had parking a Pion self-propelled howitzer outside the nearby town and put a Ukrainian flag on it.

The agency also said that Thursday’s strikes on the territory of the plant, which Ukraine says damaged water-pumping infrastructure and a fire station, had been conducted from the Russian-controlled village of Vodiane, about 4 miles east of the plant.

WAR IN UKRAINE

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https://daily.gazette.com/article/281900186992332

The Gazette, Colorado Springs