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Ukraine nuclear plant standoff stirs Chernobyl memories
By Joe STENSON
Vyschetarasivka, Ukraine (AFP) Aug 14, 2022

Ukraine, Russia accuse each other of nuclear plant strikes
Kyiv, Ukraine (AFP) Aug 14, 2022 - Kyiv and Moscow have exchanged blame for fresh shelling around Europe's largest nuclear facility, which is in Russia's control and has come under fire repeatedly in the past week.

The Zaporizhzhia plant in southeastern Ukraine has been occupied by Russian forces since March, and Kyiv has accused Moscow of basing hundreds of soldiers and storing arms there.

During his televised address on Saturday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Russia of nuclear "blackmail" and using the plant to "intimidate people in an extremely cynical way."

"They arrange constant provocations with shelling of the territory of the nuclear power plant and try to bring their additional forces in this direction to blackmail our state and the entire free world even more," Zelensky said.

He added that Russian forces were "hiding" behind the plant to stage bombings on the Ukrainian-controlled towns of Nikopol and Marganets.

Ukraine's nuclear agency Energoatom warned residents in the city of Energodar, where the plant is located, to stay off the streets as much as possible to avoid ongoing Russian shelling.

"According to residents, there is new shelling in the direction of the nuclear plant... the time between the start and arrival of the shelling is 3-5 seconds," Energoatom said on Saturday in a message shared on Telegram from a local chief in Energodar city, which remains loyal to Kyiv.

But pro-Moscow officials in the occupied areas of Zaporizhzhia blamed the shelling on Ukrainian forces.

"Energodar and the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant are again under fire by (Ukrainian President Volodymyr) Zelensky's militants," said Vladimir Rogov, a member of the Moscow-installed administration.

The missiles fell "in the areas located on the banks of the Dnipro river and in the plant", he said, without reporting any casualties or damage.

The river divides the areas occupied by Russia and those under Ukraine's control.

- Nuclear catastrophe -

Kyiv and Moscow have traded accusations over several rounds of shelling on the plant this month, with the strikes raising fears of a nuclear catastrophe.

The UN Security Council held an emergency over the situation on Thursday and warned of a "grave" crisis unfolding in Zaporizhzhia.

Ukraine said the first strikes on August 5 hit a high-voltage power cable and forced one of the reactors to stop working.

Then strikes on Thursday damaged a pumping station and radiation sensors.

Backed by Western allies, Ukraine has called for a demilitarised zone around the plant and demanded the withdrawal of Russian forces.

In the leafy hilltop town of Marganets, 13 kilometres (eight miles) from the nuclear facility and still in Ukrainian control, residents view the facility across the shimmering river with a dark sense of reality.

"You know, if we die, then it'll happen within one second, we won't suffer," 30-year-old Anastasiia told AFP on Friday.

"It calms me down that my child and my family will not be in pain."

The Ukrainian military has warned against visiting the shore of the Dnipro, fearing enemy troops could open fire from the other side of the river.

"There is constant fear. And the news says the situation at the plant is very tense, so it becomes more terrible with every passing second," said 18-year-old Ksenia, serving customers from a coffee kiosk along the town's main shopping strip.

"You're just afraid to go to bed because at night terrible things happen here."

Anastasiya Rudenko clutches the gleaming gold medal her late husband Viktor was awarded for working in the Chernobyl nuclear disaster zone.

He died in 2014 from bladder cancer -- perhaps a result of radiation, she thinks. Now she mourns his loss in the Ukrainian village of Vyschetarasivka, across the river from the Zaporizhzhia atomic power plant.

Kiev and Moscow accuse each other of shelling near the facility. Rockets have struck a radioactive waste storage area and monitors warn of a "grave" crisis with potential for catastrophic fallout.

Across a 14-kilometre (nine-mile) stretch of the Dnipro River, the station's hulking silhouette is clearly visible from the village where Rudenko handles paperwork proving her partner's fateful role in history's greatest nuclear calamity.

"We could have the same fate as the people of Chernobyl," the 63-year-old told AFP.

"There's nothing good in what's going on, and we don't know how it will end."

- In 'the zone' -

Ukraine remains deeply scarred by the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe, when a Soviet-era reactor exploded and streamed radiation into the atmosphere in the country's north.

Russia captured the site when it began its large-scale invasion of Ukraine in late February, stirring safety fears, but it was abandoned within weeks when Moscow failed to take Kyiv.

The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine was also occupied in the early days of the war but it has remained in Russian hands ever since.

Ukraine says enemy troops are launching attacks from the facility -- Europe's largest -- and its own military cannot return fire.

The escalating situation brings dark echoes from the past for those with close links to Chernobyl.

Anastasiya's husband Viktor worked as one of the 600,000 "liquidators", tasked with painstakingly decontaminating the "Chernobyl exclusion zone," where high radiation levels forced civilian evacuations.

The official death toll of Chernobyl remains just 31, however that figure is hotly contested with some estimating that thousands of liquidators may have suffered fatal doses of the invisible rays.

Viktor drove a truck in "the zone" for a total of 18 days. A gold service ribbon awarded by the Ukraine Chernobyl Union shows atoms swirling around the "bell of Chernobyl", a symbol which has become a ringing reminder of the event.

A brittle document from Ukraine's defence ministry archives certifies Viktor's work and the dose of radiation he absorbed -- 24.80 roentgen.

"When I see my husband's papers, I feel pain," explained Anastasiya. "Many people died or were permanently injured."

"When the Zaporizhzhia plant is being shelled we can see it quite well," she added. "People are rumouring that there is something leaking, but they avoid publicly admitting it."

- Living liquidators -

Vasyl Davydov says there are three "liquidators" still living in the village of Vyschetarasivka, a bucolic collection of garden-fringed bungalows with a hazy view of the Zaporizhzhia plant's six reactors and twin cooling towers.

He is one of them. He spent three and a half months working on Chernobyl decontamination, with 102 trips to "the zone" operating a crackling dosimeter to measure levels of radiation and razing tainted homes to the ground.

In his garden the 65-year-old unpacks his own service medals onto a refrigerator lying on its side, used as a makeshift table. One depicts the figure of Atlas holding the world, the image of a globe supplanted by the Chernobyl plant.

There are pictures too. Of Davydov as a handsome uniformed serviceman, posing with comrades and in front of a patriotic sign declaring: "Soldier! We will revive life on the grounds of Chernobyl."

"I was there. I saw it all, and I saw the scale," he said.

Just days after Russian troops took the plant iodine tablets, to block a certain kind of radiation, were handed out in the village in case of emergency, according to Davydov.

But his time working in "the zone" seems to have inured him to a fear of living opposite the Zaporizhzhia plant, even in a moment of crisis.

"If you believe everything, then you can go crazy," he said. "So you filter everything through your experience."

"What will my fear do?" he asked. "How can it help me?"


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