Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky tweeted on Thursday evening that Russian troops are trying to capture the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the northern part of the Kiev Region. The plant was the site of the 1986 disaster, which caused massive contamination of the surrounding area and parts of Europe.
Zelensky claimed there was fighting in Chernobyl hours into Moscow’s “special operation,” which the Kremlin says was launched to protect the breakaway eastern republics in the Donbass.
“Our defenders are giving their lives so that the tragedy of 1986 will not be repeated,” Zelensky tweeted.
The adviser to Ukraine’s interior minister and former MP, Anton Gerashchenko, wrote on social media that Russian forces have crossed into Ukraine from Belarus and entered the exclusion zone set up around the plant after the disaster.