Russian forces deliberately struck a storage facility for spent nuclear fuel near Ukraine’s Chornobyl power plant, President Volodymyr Zelensky has said, in an “extremely vile” attack that did not lead to a spike in radiation.
The strike significantly damaged a fuel-reception building metres away from where “large amounts of nuclear material” is stored, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency, which said it had been briefed by Ukraine.
Kyiv’s state atomic agency Energoatom said no spent fuel had been stored in the building at the time of the attack. A resulting fire was extinguished, and no injuries were reported.
Russia has not publicly commented on the alleged strike on the facility, which is located around 15km from the Chornobyl plant, the site of the world’s worst nuclear disaster.
“An extremely critical infrastructure facility – and an extremely vile Russian strike,” Mr Zelensky wrote on X, adding that Russia had used a Shahed attack drone.
“As of now, there are no readings exceeding normal background radiation levels. But there is certainly an increase in Russia’s brazenness, which long ago went off the charts.”
In a statement, the IAEA said a team would soon visit the site “to inspect the impact”.
In February 2025, a Russian Shahed drone damaged a containment arch over the Chornobyl reactor that was destroyed in the April 1986 explosion and meltdown. Russia, which regularly attacks Ukrainian cities and infrastructure with drones and missiles, denied responsibility.
Kyiv and Moscow have also traded accusations of attacking the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in southeastern Ukraine, Europe’s largest.
Mr Zelensky will meet the leaders of France, Germany and Britain for talks on the way forward as Russia suffers military setbacks in the invasion of its neighbour.
A Russian drone strike killed a 56-year-old man working as a minibus driver in Ukraine’s southern Zaporizhzhia region, the State Emergency Service of Ukraine wrote on Telegram.
A 59-year-old man was killed in a separate attack in the central Dnipropetrovsk region, when Russian drones and aerial bombs rained down over two districts, regional military chief Oleksandr Ganzha posted on Telegram.
Volodymyr Zelensky proposed a face-to-face meeting with Vladimir Putin in an open letter
The attacks wounded a 35-year-old man and damaged infrastructure, Mr Ganzha said.
Ukraine recaptured more territory than it lost to Russian forces in May for the second straight month, AFP analysis of data from the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) showed earlier this month.
Russia’s offensive has meanwhile led to rising prices, tax hikes, two-decade-high borrowing costs, business shutdowns and labour shortages, putting the economy in its trickiest spot since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Mr Zelensky proposed a face-to-face meeting with Vladimir Putin in an open letter to the Russian leader on Thursday, saying he was also ready for a “full ceasefire”.
Mr Putin, speaking at Russia’s flagship economic forum on Friday, rejected suggestions the Russian economy had collapsed, saying “we have descended to the same level at which Eurozone countries have been experiencing growth for the past few years”.