A suspected drone strike near the ruins of Chornobyl has again thrust Ukraine’s nuclear safety into the spotlight, after President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russian forces deliberately hit a storage facility for spent nuclear fuel — an “extremely vile” attack that, he stressed, did not trigger a rise in radiation.
The blast caused serious damage to a fuel-reception building just metres from a site holding “large amounts of nuclear material,” the International Atomic Energy Agency said, citing a briefing it received from Ukraine.
Ukraine’s state atomic agency Energoatom said the damaged building did not contain any spent fuel at the time. It added that firefighters put out the blaze and that no one was hurt.
Moscow has not publicly addressed the allegation. The facility lies about 15km from the Chornobyl power plant, the scene of the world’s worst nuclear disaster.
“An extremely critical infrastructure facility – and an extremely vile Russian strike,” Mr Zelensky wrote on X, saying Russia used a Shahed attack drone.
“As of now, there are no readings exceeding normal background radiation levels. But there is certainly an increase in Russia’s brazenness, which long ago went off the charts.”
The IAEA said it would dispatch a team to the location “to inspect the impact”.
The episode echoes an earlier incident: in February 2025, a Russian Shahed drone damaged the containment arch over the Chornobyl reactor destroyed in the April 1986 explosion and meltdown. Russia denied responsibility at the time, even as it continued widespread drone and missile strikes on Ukrainian cities and infrastructure.
Separate tensions persist around the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in southeastern Ukraine — Europe’s largest — with Kyiv and Moscow repeatedly accusing one another of attacks.
Mr Zelensky is due to meet the leaders of France, Germany and Britain for talks on the way forward as Russia faces military setbacks in its invasion of its neighbour.
Elsewhere, Russia’s drone campaign continued to exact a toll. In Ukraine’s southern Zaporizhzhia region, a Russian drone strike killed a 56-year-old man who was working as a minibus driver, Ukraine’s State Emergency Service said on Telegram.
In the central Dnipropetrovsk region, a separate attack killed a 59-year-old man after Russian drones and aerial bombs struck two districts, regional military chief Oleksandr Ganzha said in a Telegram post.
Volodymyr Zelensky proposed a face-to-face meeting with Vladimir Putin in an open letter
The assault also wounded a 35-year-old man and damaged infrastructure, Mr Ganzha said.
On the battlefield, Ukraine has regained more territory than it lost to Russian forces in May for a second consecutive month, according to an AFP analysis of data from the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) published earlier this month.
Russia’s offensive has also strained its economy, driving up prices and taxes while borrowing costs hit a two-decade high — pressures that have been accompanied by business closures and labour shortages, leaving Russia in what analysts describe as its most difficult economic position since the full-scale invasion began in February 2022.
Against that backdrop, Mr Zelensky on Thursday called publicly for direct talks, proposing a face-to-face meeting with Vladimir Putin in an open letter and saying he was ready for a “full ceasefire”.
Mr Putin, speaking on Friday at Russia’s flagship economic forum, dismissed claims of an economic collapse, saying: “we have descended to the same level at which Eurozone countries have been experiencing growth for the past few years”.
