Zelensky: Russian capture of Chernobyl put world on 'brink of disaster'
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Tuesday that Russia's capture of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the initial phase of Moscow's invasion of Ukraine had pushed the world towards the "brink of disaster".
"The world was once again on the brink of disaster" because Russia treated the Chernobyl zone "like a normal battleground, territory where they didn't even try to care about nuclear safety", Zelensky said during a press conference with UN atomic watchdog chief Rafael Grossi.
"No country in the world since 1986 has posed such a large-scale threat to nuclear security in Europe and the world than Russia has since February 24," he added, referring to the date Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered his military to attack Ukraine.
Grossi meanwhile told reporters his job was to ensure that "the tragedy of war will not be increased by a nuclear accident".
He said there would be "special work dedicated to the restoration, recuperation of all the capacities there and the infrastructure that was damaged in the past few weeks".
In an evening statement later Tuesday Zelensky said that Russia had fired missiles at Ukraine directly over Ukrainian nuclear power plants.
"Are they threatening us?" he said.
He added that after seeing how Russian troops had operated within the Chernobyl zone and around the southern Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, "no one in the world can feel safe."
Russian troops took over the site on February 24, the first day of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, taking Ukrainian soldiers prisoner and detaining civilian staff.
The occupation lasted until the end of March and raised global fears of nuclear leaks.
Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky has been lobbying for heavier firepower to push back the Russian advance now focused on the eastern region of Donbas.
Western allies are wary of being drawn into an outright war with Russia, but Washington pledged Tuesday at a summit to move "heaven and earth" to enable Ukraine to emerge victorious.
"Ukraine clearly believes that it can win and so does everyone here," US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin told 40 allies gathered at the Ramstein Air Base in Germany.
With arms flowing into Ukraine, Germany announced Tuesday it would send anti-aircraft tanks -- a sharp U-turn dropping its much-criticised cautious stance.
"I can say one thing: the Ukrainian army will have something to fight with," Dmytro Kuleba, Ukraine's foreign minister, said in a briefing on Facebook.
"We have entered a completely new phase.... But this is just the beginning. Much more will come to us."
The Ukrainian defence ministry reported in its latest update that fighting was raging across the east with shelling of Kharkiv city and Russian troops launching an offensive on the town of Barvinkove near Izium.
