Kyiv Regime Alleges Russia Ready To Blow Up Zaporozhye Nuclear Plant

June 26, 2023, 2022 (EIRNS)—Kyrylo Budanov, the chief of military intelligence for the Kyiv regime, surfaced in a June 23 interview with the British journal New Statesman to retail the claim that Russia has prepared to sabotage the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant with mines set to blow up its cooling pond. Budanov told his interviewer that without cooling, the nuclear reactors could melt in a period of between 10 hours and 14 days. He believes Russia would be able to raise the voltage in the power supply lines to the plant, bringing about a nuclear accident at the lower end of that time frame. As Budanov put it during the interview, “Technical means could be used to speed up the catastrophe.” Ukrainian military intelligence has also been able to establish that Russian troops have moved vehicles charged with explosives to four of the six power units, he claimed further.

All that’s left to do is to issue the order. Budanov is confident the plan is fully “drafted and approved.” The only element missing is the order to go ahead. “Then it can happen in a matter of minutes.”

As for why Russia would blow up the power plant, Budanov offered two possibilities. The first would depend on what military benefit Russia would see from causing a nuclear disaster, particularly if Ukrainian forces succeed in crossing the Dnieper River in the Kherson region and “ousting” Russian forces from the region. The second possibility is that Russia would use a nuclear disaster as a “preventive measure” to stop the Ukrainian offensive in the south before it got started.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, (in Russian) in an interview today with RT slammed allegations that Russia was getting to blow up the nuclear plant as information warfare. “This is utter nonsense, we have said this many times,” he said, reported TASS.

“The fact that this overused warning has been surfacing in the media space for some time, primarily out of the mouths of the Kyiv regime’s representatives, means only one thing: these people have been trained to wage information warfare by the Anglo-Saxons, the Poles and even by the Balts, who have become senior comrades for Ukraine,”

he said. “If the results of this training are as deplorable as they are unconvincing, then I am sorry for the money Western taxpayers have to spend to pay the wages of the instructors who are training such unfit and inept pupils,” Lavrov said.

Russian officials have warned numerous times in recent weeks that it is the Kyiv regime that is planning provocations at the nuclear plant, for the purpose of blaming Russia for the disaster that will result.