Ukrainian Forces Shell Areas Near Zaporozhye NPP Using British-Made Howitzers: Authorities

Russia's Foreign and Defense Ministries have accused Western countries and international organizations of turning a blind eye to Kiev's "nuclear terrorism" via attacks on the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant - the largest nuclear energy facility in Europe. Western media claims that Russia, which controls the plant, is attacking it themselves.

The Ukrainian military shelled the Zaporozhye region city of Energodar in massed artillery strikes on Monday, with explosions recorded near the city's NPP, local authorities have reported.

"For more than an hour, the Ukrainian Armed Forces terrorists have been conducting massive strikes from artillery positions. Explosions have been recorded in Energodar in the area of the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant, residential microdistricts and the city's industrial zone," Energodar's administration said in a press release.

Strikes were also reported on the nearby settlement of Ivanovka.

City emergency services were dispatched to collect information about possible victims and damage.

The artillery fire was conducted from across the Dnieper River, the northern bank of which is controlled by Ukrainian forces.

Energodar administration council member Vladimir Rogov provided an update on the situation later in the day, saying the Ukrainian military had carried out about 25 heavy artillery strikes using British-made 155-mm M777 howitzers.

"Over the past two hours, about 25 strikes using heavy [M]777 artillery were inflicted on a peaceful city, the area around the nuclear power plant and its residential areas," Rogov wrote on his Telegram page.

Ukraine was stocked up with more than 130 of the BAE Systems-manufactured guns, with the artillery pieces delivered to the country by the US, Australia, and Canada, along with other military "aid" to Kiev in recent months.

The massive Zaporozhye NPP and its six reactors has been under the control of Russian forces since March, with a pro-Russian administration established in the city and the plant continuing to generate power and to provide nearly half of Ukraine's electricity. The plant's security is handled jointly by Russian forces and local authorities and police, and the vast majority of its 11,000 nuclear engineers and other employees have remained at their posts despite the conflict.

The Ukrainian military and nationalist battalions have repeatedly attacked the facility using drones and long-range artillery. Local authorities and the Russian military and Foreign Ministry have accused Kiev of engaging in "nuclear terrorism," threatening not only Ukraine and Russia, but the whole of Europe with a nuclear catastrophe.

Western media reporting on the dire situation around Zaporozhye NPP has been nothing short of schizophrenic, with the MSM sticking to Kiev's narrative that Russian forces are shelling a facility which they themselves control and rigging it with mines and explosives.

Last week, Russian Ambassador to the United Nations Vassily Nebenzia warned the Security Council that the planet was on the brink of a nuclear catastrophe, saying that a disaster sparked by a Ukrainian attack on the ZNPP could happen "at any moment," and spew radioactive pollution across most of Ukraine's major population centers, including Kiev, Kharkov, and Odessa, as well as wide areas in neighboring Russia, Belarus, the Donbass republics, Moldova, Romania, and Bulgaria.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres encouraged the creation of a demilitarized zone around the ZNPP last Thursday, but has taken flak from Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova for failing to take Kiev to task for the ongoing attacks against the facility.

Moscow has encouraged officials from the International Atomic Energy Agency, including IAEA chief Rafael Grossi, to visit the ZNPP to get a sense of the situation on the ground. Grossi's plans to visit the facility have been on hold since June, and Zakharova fears that Guterres' position could result in the trip again being pushed back or scrapped.

The Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant is one of five nuclear energy generation facilities built across Ukraine during the Soviet period. In the years since the 2014 coup, nuclear industry specialists have sounded the alarm about the threat of "another Chernobyl" ripping through Ukraine due to a host of problems at the plants, including lack of funding, management by staff appointed based on personal connections rather than industry experience, and a switchover to nuclear fuel made by Westinghouse, despite its initial incompatibility with the plant's Soviet/Russian standard reactors.