The Great Chamber of Commerce called on Russia to return the Zaporizhzhia NPP to Ukraine – Politoco
The G7 condemn Russia's abduction of nuclear facility personnel.
The Big Seven developed economies of the world condemned Russia’s abduction of the leadership of the Ukrainian Zaporizhzhya NPP and called for the immediate return of full control over the facility to Kyiv.
“We condemn Russia’s repeated abduction of management and staff of the Ukrainian Zaporizhia Nuclear Power Plant and condemn the use of other forms of pressure on the remaining Ukrainian staff,” the G7 non-proliferation chiefs said in a statement on Saturday evening. The group includes the USA, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Great Britain.
They called on Russia to “immediately return full control” of the station to “its rightful sovereign owner, Ukraine, and withdraw all Russian personnel from the facility and cease any attempts to recklessly and dangerously transfer” it to Russian control, “which could further put jeopardizing its safe and reliable operation.”
This month, Russian President Putin ordered his government to take control of Zaporizhzhia, Europe’s largest nuclear power plant.
Concerns about the nuclear plant came after Russia launched a “massive missile strike,” hitting power facilities and other infrastructure in central and western Ukraine, leaving hundreds of thousands of people without power. By the evening, some areas of Kyiv were cut off, writes Politico.
“The geography of this latest mass attack is very broad,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi said in his nightly video address. And on Sunday, as reported by Agence France-Presse, the Kyiv energy operator announced that scheduled “stabilization” power cuts were introduced in the Ukrainian capital after repeated Russian strikes.
According to media reports, the State Nuclear Energy Agency of Ukraine, Energoatom, on Tuesday accused Russia of detaining two high-ranking employees at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine.
In a statement on Energoatom’s social networks, it is said that Russian troops on Monday “kidnapped” the head of the information technology department Oleg Kostyukov and the assistant general director of the plant Oleg Oshek and “took them to an unknown direction.”
In a separate development of the war, which has already reached its eighth month, the Air Force of Ukraine reported on Sunday that 14 Iranian Shahed-136 kamikaze drones were shot down at night in Mykolaiv region in southern Ukraine.
This week, the EU imposed sanctions on three high-ranking Iranian generals and Iranian drone manufacturer Shahed Aviation Industries, and proposed additional sanctions on two individuals and two entities already under sanctions “due to their role in the development and delivery” of drones to Russia
Tehran denies supplying drones to Moscow during its war with Ukraine and on Saturday reportedly strongly condemned a call by France, Germany and Britain for the United Nations to investigate allegations of Russia’s use of Iranian-made drones.
