Despite earlier appeals from Western leaders for Vladimir Putin to withdraw his forces from the plant, more blasts were reported around the facility on Friday.
“The area of the plant should in fact be demilitarised with international peace forces controlling the territory. No fighting should be allowed around a facility like this.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has warned that a major nuclear disaster like the 1980s Chernobyl catastrophe “could happen again” at the Zaporizhzhia plant.
In a video address to an international donor conference for Ukraine in Copenhagen, Denmark, Zelensky said that Russia was doing everything “to maximise the risk of a nuclear disaster.”
Zelensky accused Russia of turning the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power complex, the biggest in Europe, into a "battlefield," saying that "the Russian occupation army is using the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant for terror and armed provocations."
Meanwhile, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for an immediate end to military activity near the Zaporizhzhia plant, the Reuters news agency reported.
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Source: PAP/Reuters