Austria to Unblock Funds for UN Palestinian Relief Organization
Ukraine live briefing: Backup generators prevented ‘radiation accident’ at Zaporizhzhia plant, Zelensky says
Europe’s largest nuclear power plant came closer than ever to a radiation disaster after ongoing fighting near the Zaporizhzhia facility cut it off from Ukraine’s electricity grid on Thursday, causing a massive power outage in the area, President Volodymyr Zelensky said, amid heightened fears of a coming calamity.
It was the first time in the Zaporizhzhia plant’s history that it had been disconnected from the grid, Ukrainian officials said. Backup diesel generators immediately kicked in to help sustain critical operations, but if they had not, “we would already be forced to overcome the consequences of the radiation accident,” Zelensky said. Russian troops have occupied the plant for months, and international monitors have issued increasingly dire please for the site’s demilitarization. Ukrainian and Russian officials traded blame for the shelling that triggered the outage.