Sign up now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Register KYIV, Aug 13 (Reuters) – Ukraine is targeting Russian soldiers who fire on an occupied nuclear plant in the country’s south or use it as a base from which to fire, President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Saturday. Ukraine and Russia have traded accusations over several recent bombing incidents at the Zaporizhzhia facility, Europe’s largest nuclear power plant. Russian troops occupied the station early in the war. “Every Russian soldier who either shoots at the plant or shoots using the plant as cover must understand that he is becoming a special target for our intelligence agents, for our special services, for our military,” Zelensky said in an afternoon speech. Sign up now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Register Zelensky, who did not elaborate, repeated accusations that Russia was using the plant as nuclear blackmail. The group of G7 countries called on Moscow to withdraw its forces from the power station. Ukraine’s defense intelligence service earlier warned of new Russian “provocations” around the plant, while the exiled mayor of the town where the plant is located said it had come under fresh Russian shelling. But local official Vladimir Rogov wrote on Telegram that Ukrainian forces are shelling the factory. The adviser to the Ukrainian president, Mykhailo Podolyak, accused Russia of “hitting the part of the nuclear plant where the energy that supplies the south of Ukraine is produced.” “The goal is to disconnect us from (the plant) and blame the Ukrainian military for it,” Podolyak tweeted. The Defense Intelligence Service said Russian troops had parked a Pion self-propelled howitzer outside the nearby town and placed a Ukrainian flag on it. The agency also said Thursday’s strikes on the factory grounds, which Ukraine says destroyed water pumping infrastructure and a fire station, were carried out from the Russian-held village of Vodiane, about seven kilometers (4.35 miles ) east of the factory. . Sign up now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Register Report by Max Hunder and David Ljunggren. Edited by Hugh Lawson and Sandra Maler Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
