Ukraine says Russian drone damaged Chornobyl's radiation shield
Radiation levels remain normal, UN watchdog says
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Friday that a Russian drone had caused significant damage to the radiation containment shelter at the disused Chornobyl nuclear power plant overnight.
Zelenskyy and the UN's atomic energy watchdog both said that radiation levels remained normal after the incident, which came as top U.S., Ukrainian and European officials gathered at the Munich Security Conference to discuss the war in Ukraine.
The Chornobyl station's chief engineer, speaking to reporters at the site, said a drone had exploded inside and damaged the structure meant to keep radiation from spreading.
Maria Zakharova, spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, accused Zelenskyy of orchestrating a drone attack to coincide with the Munich event as part of a lobbying effort to secure more weapons and money from the West.
Chornobyl was the site of the world's worst civil nuclear catastrophe, when one of its four reactors exploded in 1986. That reactor is now enveloped by a protective shelter to contain the lingering radiation.
The last working reactor at Chornobyl was shut down in 2000. Russia occupied the plant and the surrounding area for more than a month during its push toward the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, at the beginning of the invasion.
Overnight strike
The Russian drone struck the shelter of the destroyed power unit at the plant, causing a fire that has since been extinguished, Zelenskyy wrote on the Telegram app.
"According to initial assessments, the damage to the shelter is significant," he said.
Chernobyl's chief engineer, Oleksandr Tytarchuk, said emergency crews were working to minimize the aftermath.
"The barrier which was supposed to prevent the spread of radioactive substances has ceased to function according to its original design," Tytarchuk told reporters at the plant.
He said the drone "hit the outer cover, pierced it, fell into the system and exploded there." Had the explosion occurred 15-20 metres farther away, he said, "it would have directly hit the old shelter, which is 40 years old."
Ukraine's SBU security service showed pictures of what it said was the drone, which it said had been carrying a high-explosive warhead.
It said the drone was a Geran-2, the Russian name for the Iranian-designed Shahed-136, and had been intended to hit the reactor enclosure.
Marcel Plichta, a fellow at the Centre for Global Law and Governance at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, said the visuals released by Ukraine almost certainly showed a Shahed-136.
"The warhead of these drones is usually around 30 kilograms, which is notable because it means Russia can grab headlines by launching the attack, but probably wouldn't cause large amounts of damage like you would see from a traditional missile," he said.
"Russia frequently uses attacks like this to regain control of the narrative."
Dozens of countries help fund shelter
Andriy Yermak, the Ukrainian president's chief of staff, posted photographs of the shelter with what appeared to be a small fire near the top of its vast arch.
The shelter, known as the New Safe Confinement, is a hulking, arch-shaped steel and concrete structure that was completed in 2019 to cover an earlier Soviet-built version, which had deteriorated.
Zelenskyy told reporters at the Munich conference that the drone flew at a height of 85 metres, which prevented it from being spotted by Ukraine's radar.
The New Safe Confinement is 108 metres high and 162 metres high long, spans 257 metres and has an expected lifetime of at least 100 years, according to the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development (EBRD).
According to the EBRD, the New Safe Confinement cost 1.5 billion euros ($2.26 billion Cdn) and was financed by 45 donor countries and institutions, including Canada.
Yermak said the United States had also contributed significant amounts of money and effort to building it.
"We will provide a lot of information to our American partners today about Russia's strikes on the Chornobyl nuclear power plant, about how they constantly launch drones over the Chornobyl zone, about the threat of shelter and nuclear security that they pose," Yermak wrote on Telegram.
"The atmosphere at the moment is that everyone is very angry at this news here in Munich. Not 'concerned,' as is often the case, but really angry."
On the conference's sidelines, Kyiv's Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha held an urgent meeting with the International Atomic Energy Agency's director general, Rafael Grossi.
Zelenskyy held what he described as a "good meeting" with U.S. Vice-President J.D. Vance. The discussion comes at a delicate moment for Ukraine, with U.S. President Donald Trump pushing for rapid negotiations and an end to the war.
