KYIV: A senior adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky 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 analizing 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.
Ukraine denies Russian allegation it tried to attack Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant
https://arab.news/4ktnq
Ukraine denies Russian allegation it tried to attack Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant
- Europe’s largest nuclear plant is currently offline, under Russian control in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region
- “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
UN chief calls on Israel to reverse NGOs ban in Gaza
- In November, authorities in Gaza said more than 70,000 people had been killed there since the war broke out
- Israel on Thursday suspended 37 foreign humanitarian organizations from accessing the Gaza Strip after they had refused to share lists of their Palestinian employees with government officials
UNITED NATIONS, United States: UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres called on Friday for Israel to end a ban on humanitarian agencies that provided aid in Gaza, saying he was “deeply concerned” at the development.
Guterres “calls for this measure to be reversed, stressing that international non-governmental organizations are indispensable to life-saving humanitarian work and that the suspension risks undermining the fragile progress made during the ceasefire,” his spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said in a statement.
“This recent action will further exacerbate the humanitarian crisis facing Palestinians,” he added.
Israel on Thursday suspended 37 foreign humanitarian organizations from accessing the Gaza Strip after they had refused to share lists of their Palestinian employees with government officials.
The ban includes Doctors Without Borders (MSF), which has 1,200 staff members in the Palestinian territories — the majority of whom are in Gaza.
NGOs included in the ban have been ordered to cease their operations by March 1.
Several NGOS have said the requirements contravene international humanitarian law or endanger their independence.
Israel says the new regulation aims to prevent bodies it accuses of supporting terrorism from operating in the Palestinian territories.
On Thursday, 18 Israel-based left-wing NGOs denounced the decision to ban their international peers, saying “the new registration framework violates core humanitarian principles of independence and neutrality.”
A fragile ceasefire has been in place since October, following a deadly war waged by Israel in response to Hamas’s unprecedented October 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
In November, authorities in Gaza said more than 70,000 people had been killed there since the war broke out.
Nearly 80 percent of buildings in Gaza have been destroyed or damaged by the war, according to UN data, leaving infrastructure decimated.
About 1.5 million of Gaza’s more than two million residents have lost their homes, said Amjad Al-Shawa, director of the Palestinian NGO Network in Gaza.
