Ukraine denies Russian allegation it tried to attack Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant

A senior adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy denied a Russian assertion on Wednesday that Kyiv had tried to attack the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) with a drone.

Europe’s largest nuclear plant is currently offline, under Russian control in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region, near the front line of Russia’s conflict with Kyiv.

The Russian state news agency RIA had cited Russian security forces, without naming any specific source, as saying Ukraine had tried to attack a spent nuclear fuel storage facility at the plant with a strike drone, which had been forced down.

“Ukraine did not carry out any kind of drone attack on the ZNPP, was not planning and will not even in theory do so,” the adviser, Mykhailo Podolyak, said in a statement.

RIA distributed a photograph of the purported downed drone, a quadcopter, and said security forces had reached their conclusion by analysing its flight path.

But later the Russian state news agency TASS cited Renat Karchaa, adviser to the general director of the Russian nuclear utility Rosenergoatom, as saying the apparent target had been outside the nuclear compound.

“According to the information we have, the purpose of this drone was other important objects located outside the Zaporizhzhia NPP,” Karchaa said.