Ukrainian intelligence: What Russians do with ZNPP is nuclear blackmail

Andrii Yusov, a representative of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, said this in an interview with Anastasia Katerynchuk (the show "Visiting Dmytro Gordon"), according to the directorate's press service, Ukrinform reports.

"A whole series of norms and standards of nuclear safety at the ZNPP are no longer ensured by the occupation authorities. What they do all the time with our Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant is nuclear blackmail: it includes placing forces and means, weapons there; this is shelling by the ruscists from and at the territory of the ZNPP; this is the terror of the power plant staff and many other factors," he said.

According to Yusov, blackmail at the ZNPP and other occupied critical infrastructure facilities is connected with Russia's awareness that sooner or later they will have to withdraw from the occupied territories of Ukraine.

"The main thing that every Ukrainian and the whole world should understand is that in Kakhovka, at the Crimean Titan plant and throughout Ukraine, safety, including environmental and nuclear safety, at these facilities will be guaranteed when they return to the control of Ukraine and legitimate authority. As long as Russian terrorists are there, the threat will remain," Yusov said.

He noted that the enemy's claims about the possible placement of nuclear weapons in Belarus are also an element of Moscow's blackmail. According to him, neither Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko nor anyone else in that country is capable of influencing the deployment, use or fate of Russian nuclear weapons.