Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky delivered a speech commemorating the 36th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster in which he lambasted Russia's "completely irresponsible actions" towards nuclear power plants throughout its invasion and called for "global control" of the Moscow's nuclear capabilities.
"Every year on April 26, the world remembers the Chernobyl disaster, the worst nuclear disaster in human history," Zelenskyy said. He went on to say that this year "it is not enough just to remember Chernobyl" as Russia generated new dangers that "could surpass even the worst accident."
The Ukrainian President recalled the night of March 4, when the biggest nuclear power facility in Europe, Zaporizhzhia, caught fire when Russian forces began pounding the complex during the invasion, as per a Fox News report.
"They knew exactly which object they were firing at but they had an order to seize the object at any cost," Zelensky said.
He claimed that the Russian forces "did not care about anything."
"They did not care that the Zaporizhzhia station was the largest in Europe. They didn't think about how many power units there are and how the shelling could end," President Zelensky said.
Zelenskyy discussed with world leaders that night, including US President Joe Biden.
Today marks 36 years since #ChNPP tragedy. It took the lives of tens of thousands of people and made the world realize the danger of careless handling of the "peaceful atom". Regretfully, not everyone realized. Now RF's actions at 🇺🇦 NPPs threaten humanity with a new catastrophe.
— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) April 26, 2022
Zelenskyy stated that Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi of the International Atomic Energy Agency visited him in Kyiv to mourn the Chernobyl accident and promise his assistance.
They talked about all the threats generated by Russia and how to defend Europe and the rest of the globe from Russia's "completely irresponsible actions."
He also called for a global takeover of Moscow's nuclear capacities.
Russia Accuses Ukraine Of Developing Nuclear And Chemical Weapons
On Tuesday, Russia alleged that Kyiv is developing nuclear weapons to justify its attacks with US support.
"The need for demilitarization is due to the fact that Ukraine, saturated with weapons, poses a threat to Russia," Secretary of the Russian Security Council Nikolai Patrushev said, as reported by government-owned news agencies per New York Post.
The Russian official also accused Ukraine of developing chemical and biological weapons.
US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, on the other hand, criticized Patrushev's remarks, calling them "very dangerous." for "Nobody wants to see a nuclear war."
"I think this any bluster about the use of nuclear possibility, of use of nuclear weapons, is very dangerous and unhelpful," Austin told members of the press.
In December 1994, Ukraine agreed to hand over its nuclear weapons from the Soviet Union in exchange for security assurances from Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
Read Also : Old Vladimir Putin Video Threatening of Nuclear War if Russia Gets Attacked Goes Viral: Here's What He Said
Remembering The Chernobyl Tragedy
A Chernobyl nuclear power station reactor in what was then Soviet Ukraine melted down and exploded on April 26, 1986.
Massive clouds of radioactive smoke and dust erupted from the reactor, forcing mass evacuations from the neighboring town of Pripyat, where the plant's employees' families lived, and establishing a restricted zone still in effect today, per Daily Mail.
In the days after the explosion, 28 staff members and emergency workers perished from radiation poisoning, and also two workers died directly in the blast.
However, research conducted in the years following the incident found a significant rise in thyroid cancer cases among those residing near the nuclear plant.
The United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) documented about 20,000 cases of thyroid cancer in children and adolescents who were exposed at the time of the nuclear plant mishap between 1991 and 2015.
