Russia’s military used a drone with a high-explosive warhead to hit the former Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine overnight, damaging the protective shelter that prevents radiation leaks, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said on Friday.
In a post on social media, Mr. Zelensky called the damage “significant” but said that there were no signs of increased radiation at the plant, the site of the worst nuclear accident in history. Denys Shmyhal, the Ukrainian prime minister, said Friday morning that emergency crews had extinguished a fire at the site. A Kremlin spokesman denied that Russia had attacked the plant.
The structure that was damaged was designed to seal in vast quantities of radioactive isotopes from the fire and meltdown in 1986 at Chernobyl’s Reactor No. 4, and was intended to last generations.
The strike comes as pressure grows on Ukraine and Russia to sit down at the bargaining table three years after Moscow launched its full-scale invasion. It also comes as world leaders are gathered in Munich for an annual security conference where the war in Ukraine — and recent statements by President Trump and his team indicating that they want to find a quick peace deal — will probably dominate conversations.
Many attending the Munich conference will remember the radioactive clouds that spread over parts of Europe after the accident at Chernobyl, which happened when Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union. The accident was initially covered up by the Soviet authorities.
“Now the atmosphere is such that everyone is very angry about this news here in Munich,” Andriy Yermak, head of the presidential office in Ukraine, posted on social media. “Not ‘concerned,’ as is often the case, but really angry.”
The Kremlin denied that Russia’s military had struck the plant. Its spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, said, “The Russian military does not do this.”
“Most likely, we are talking about provocation and fraud,” he added.
The structure at Chernobyl that Ukraine says was hit on Friday is a huge arching shelter covering what remains of the crippled reactor. The meltdown spewed radiation into the atmosphere and contaminated an 18-mile zone around the plant that residents were forced to leave.
The protective structure, which resembles an aircraft hangar, was completed in 2016. It covers another structure known as the sarcophagus that was built immediately after the disaster.
Mr. Yermak noted that the whole world had helped the Kremlin rebuild after Chernobyl. “Then the whole world invested in the shelter, and today these Russian idiots have launched a drone at it,” he added.
The International Atomic Energy Agency said that its staff members at the site of the former nuclear plant heard the explosion overnight.
The strike on Chernobyl, about two hours north of Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the recent increase in military activity around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in a Russian-occupied zone “underline persistent nuclear safety risks,” said Rafael Grossi, the agency’s director general.
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