According to Ukrainian intelligence, Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered his troops to carry out “a man-made disaster” at Chernobyl. Moscow wants to fake a terrorist attack on the nuclear power plant, which it blames on Ukrainian “saboteurs”.
In this way, the Kremlin will justify even more violence and a further escalation of the war against the former Soviet country, the Kiev secret service said on Friday. Likewise, the Kremlin wants to use it to “blackmail the world” for supporting Ukraine.
According to Ukrainian spies, the “terrorist attack” is said to be carried out by Russian agents who yesterday joined a group of “specialists” dispatched from Belarus. The team is tasked with providing security at the partially destroyed nuclear power plant seized by Russian forces in the early days of the invasion.
Belarus sent the group after Putin’s men cut off Chernobyl’s surveillance systems. According to the secret service, Russia is already collecting the bodies of Ukrainian soldiers in refrigerated trucks in order to then pass them off as terrorists.
Kiev’s account cannot be independently verified. It comes amid Russian attacks on other nuclear reactors in the country — at Zaporizhia in central Ukraine and at Kharkiv in the east — in what Ukraine calls “nuclear terrorism.”
The Zaporizhia power plant was attacked last week, sparking a fire near one of the reactors that Russian forces were initially unable to extinguish. The Kharkiv Physics Institute, which houses a reactor, was also shelled this morning, but the nuclear facility was not damaged.
