"I believe that after all that the Russian military has done in the Chernobyl zone and at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, no one in the world can feel safe knowing how many nuclear facilities, nuclear weapons and related technologies the Russian state has," Zelensky said in a video message late on Tuesday.
"If Russia has forgotten what Chernobyl is, it means that global control over Russia's nuclear facilities and nuclear technology is needed,” he added in his daily address, as cited by the ukrinform.net website.
Zelensky said that "Russian troops that were trying to attack Kyiv through the Chernobyl zone used the restricted area as a military base. They set up positions on land where it is forbidden to even stand."
He added that Russian forces "looted a nuclear analytical laboratory" at the site of the defunct Chernobyl nuclear power plant.
"Only thanks to the professionalism and conscientiousness of our specialists working at the Chernobyl station ... we managed to save Ukraine, save Europe from another catastrophe," he said.
Meanwhile, on the night of March 4, a fire broke out at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southeastern Ukraine after Russian forces started shelling the plant amid the invasion, Zelensky noted.
"They knew exactly which object they were firing at," he said. "But they had an order to seize the object at any cost. They did not care about anything. They did not care that the Zaporizhzhia station was the largest in Europe. They didn't think about how many power units there are and how the shelling could end."
The Chernobyl nuclear power plant was controlled by Russian troops from February 24 to March 31, ukrinform.net reported.
Meanwhile, Russian forces captured the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant on the night of March 4, it reported.
Chernobyl was the site of the world's worst nuclear disaster in 1986. It lies some 100 kilometres north of the Ukrainian capital Kyiv.
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Source: PAP, ukrinform.net, president.gov.ua