A senior US military official admitted on Monday that Ukrainian forces may have struck the area around the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant, but insisted that this was only in response to Russian fire allegedly coming from the area. Earlier in the day, Russian authorities said a Ukrainian artillery shell damaged the roof of the building storing reactor fuel.
“What I know for sure is that the Russians are firing from around the plant,” the unnamed official told reporters during a background briefing at the Pentagon. “I also know that there are rounds that have impacted near the plant.”
The official said it was “hard to explain, I guess” how the US was monitoring the situation around the nuclear power plant, Europe’s largest.
“And I don’t want to say that the Ukrainians haven’t fired in that vicinity either because I think there’s probably a likelihood that they have, but in good – in a number of cases, it’s returning fire of the Russians who are firing from those locations,” he said.
Russian forces established control of the Zaporozhye NPP in early March. National guard and nuclear protection specialists have secured the site while the Ukrainian staff continued to operate without hindrance. The government in Kiev claims that Russian forces had turned the plant into a military base from which they were attacking Ukrainian targets, but also that Russian troops were shelling themselves in a false-flag ploy to make Ukraine look bad.