Zelensky Slams Russia’s ‘Nuclear Blackmail,’ Pleads for U.N. Action on Forced Deportations

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky decried Russia’s shelling of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Eastern Ukraine, during a meeting with U.N. chief Antonio Guterres today in Lviv, as Ukrainian defense intelligence warned that Russia is preparing another attack on the site. Russian forces have controlled it since March.

Guterres was in Kyiv to meet with Zelensky and Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan for discussions on grain shipments from Ukraine, in addition to other issues.

Earlier this month, after Russian forces shelled the nuclear plant, which is located in the southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia, Guterres told reporters that “any attack on nuclear power plants is a suicidal thing.”

During a meeting with Guterres today, Zelensky said that Russia’s tactics involving the plant are a “deliberate and cynical terror,” according to a summary of the conversation released by the Ukrainian leader’s office. He also emphasized that the U.N. “must ensure the security of this strategic object, its demilitarization and complete liberation from Russian troops.”

According to Zelensky’s office, the two officials agreed to the terms of a potential International Atomic Energy Agency mission to the power plant.

Their meeting on the fate of the nuclear facility comes at a delicate time, as Ukrainian defense intelligence is claiming that Russia ordered staff for the plant not to show up to work on Friday. On Twitter, the defense-intelligence service accused Russia of orchestrating a false-flag attack on the facility — a “high-profile provocation” — to coincide with Guterres’s visit to Ukraine.

During Guterres’s visit to the country in April, Russian missiles struck Kyiv while the U.N. official was in the area.

Zelensky also raised the plight of the hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian citizens reported to have been forcibly deported to Russia by invading troops.

“I am asking you personally to help the U.N. representatives get permanent unhindered access to the deported Ukrainians,” Zelensky said to Guterres, according to the meeting summary.

Since invading Ukrainian territory, Russia has reportedly set up several “filtration camps,” where Ukrainian individuals are put into groups, interrogated, and deported to Russia. There are reports of torture and killings in the camps, particularly of Ukrainians suspected to have ties to Kyiv’s military effort.

In a statement on July 13, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that various estimates — including those offered by the Russian government — say that between 900,000 and 1.6 million people have been deported, “often to isolated regions in [Russia’s] Far East.”

“Eyewitnesses, survivors, and Ukraine’s General Prosecutor have reported that Russian authorities have transported tens of thousands of people to detention facilities inside Russian-controlled Donetsk, where many are reportedly tortured,” Blinken also said. “There are reports that some individuals targeted for ‘filtration’ have been summarily executed, consistent with evidence of Russian atrocities committed in Bucha, Mariupol, and other locations in Ukraine.”