Russian forces occupying Ukraine’s Zaporizhia nuclear power plant are preparing to connect it with Crimea, a peninsula annexed by Moscow in 2014, and harm it by reorienting electricity production, Ukrainian operator Energoatom warned on Tuesday, AFP and Agerpres said. .

“Russian military personnel stationed at the Zaporizhia NPP are implementing the (Russian operator) Rosatom’s program to connect the power plant to Crimea’s power grid,” Petro Kotin, president of Energoatom NAEC, said on Ukrainian television.

“For this, the plant’s power lines connected to the Ukrainian power system must first be damaged. From August 7 to 9, the Russians already damaged three power lines. Currently, the plant is working with only one production line, which is an extremely dangerous way of working,” he added.

“When the last line is disconnected, the power plant will operate from diesel generators. Further, everything will depend on their reliability and fuel reserves,” Petro Kotin warned.

Located near the town of Energodar on the Dnipro River, not far from Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula (south), Europe’s largest plant has six of Ukraine’s 15 reactors capable of powering four million homes. It came under the control of Russian troops on March 4, shortly after the start of the invasion of Ukraine on February 24.

Since Friday, Moscow and Kyiv have accused each other of the bombing, but no independent source can confirm this. President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy waved away the ghost of the Chernobyl disaster.

“Any attack on nuclear power plants is suicide,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned on Monday morning. “I hope that these attacks will end. At the same time, I hope that the IAEA will be able to gain access to the plant,” he added.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on Saturday assessed “increasingly alarming” information coming from Zaporizhzhia, where the reactor had to be shut down after being bombed the day before.