Ukrainian Armed Forces in the vicinity of Enerhodar, a city by Dnipro River south of Zaporizhzhia and near Nikopol, home to six Soviet-era nuclear power reactors, will defend themselves from approaching Russian Federation (RF) forces, a city official said in a statement.
Anton Heraschenko, vice Interior Minister, said National Guard units are digging in, ready for battle with oncoming RF armored forces. They will hold their ground to the last, he said.
Heraschenko said Enerhodar’s nuclear power reactors are massively built and their main superstructure is impervious to practically all weapons. Fighting in the reactors’ vicinity could likely damage electricity transmission and reactor cooling equipment, he added.
He called on RF troops to refrain from attacking the town due to the danger of radiation leak.
On March 3 social media and news images showed Enerhodar’s residents building barricades across the road entering their town, and an RF armored column halted at some distance. Ukraine was the site of the world’s worst nuclear power accident in 1986, when Soviet engineers conducting a test allowed reaction in one of the two reactors at the Chornobyl power station to go out of control.
The subsequent explosion spread radiation across Europe.
