Zaporizhzhia and South Ukraine nuclear power plants are still under the control of Ukraine, the acting head of the country's state-owned nuclear firm Energoatom said Thursday, while Russian troops resumed their advance and are now some 30 kilometers (19 miles) away from both plants.
Petro Kotin, speaking with Reuters in an interview, called Russia's capture last week of the defunct Chernobyl nuclear power plant "nuclear terrorism." He said Energoatom had transferred requests to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) earlier on Thursday through a position paper.
Kyiv asked the U.N. atomic watchdog to downgrade its relationship with Russia, and for the agency to help create a 30-kilometer perimeter ban from power plants for Russian forces as well as to push for NATO to establish a no-fly zone over the country, according to the paper seen by Reuters.
The IAEA has said it is working with all sides to ascertain in which effective way it could provide assistance. The IAEA board of governors on Thursday passed a resolution criticizing Russia over its invasion of Ukraine and calling on it to let Ukraine control all its nuclear facilities, with just two votes against, diplomats said.
The United States and its NATO allies have rejected Ukraine's request to impose a no-fly zone over the country, arguing this would lead to direct confrontation with nuclear-armed Russia.
Kotin said Russian troops have advanced to within 35 kilometers of the Zaporizhzhia plant, which is the largest power plant in Europe. Ukrainian and Russian troops had clashed on Wednesday in Voznesensk, a town in the southern Mykolaiv oblast located about 30 kilometers away from the South Ukraine (Yuzhnoukrainsk) power plant.
"If the situation worsens, it will be impossible to think what will happen if they start shelling. They just don't know what they are doing," Kotin said, adding that he did not believe the Russians had been given the final order to launch an attack on the plants.
Russia calls its actions in Ukraine that began on Feb. 24 a "special operation" that it says is not designed to occupy territory but to destroy its southern neighbor's military capabilities and capture what it regards as dangerous nationalists.
Kotin said the Russian troops wanted local forces to surrender so they could take control of the surrounding areas and the power plant. Residents of the town of Enerhodar near the Zaporizhzhia plant had recently erected barricades near the facility on the Dnieper River and staged protests against Russian troops.
"The Zaporizhzhia plant is still working normally. There is no deviation from normal operations but consumption during this war has decreased dramatically to only three units from six working units," he said of the 6,000-megawatt plant.
Russian forces last week seized the spent nuclear fuel and radioactive waste facilities at Chernobyl, the site of the world's worst nuclear accident at a now-defunct power plant.
The IAEA has said its staff has since not been able to rotate, something that Kotin said was becoming a psychological strain on them.
A Russian security source told Reuters on Feb. 25 that Russia wanted to control the Chernobyl nuclear reactor to signal to NATO not to interfere militarily.
Kotin said there was no logic to this capture. Since the seizure, Chernobyl had seen radiation levels rise by between 5 to 15 times the usual level – still relatively low – as heavy armored vehicles stirred up material that had been in the ground for the last 35 years, he said.
"There is no economic benefit. It can only bring trouble to Ukraine, Russia and everybody in the world," Kotin said. "We ask them to leave this zone and give it back to Ukrainian experts because there could be an ecological catastrophe," he said.