Look at this HUGE propaganda picture!
He’s telling us NATO plans. This is terrible…
Russians could blow up nuclear plant to halt Ukraine’s forces, Zelenskyy warns
Francisco Seco/AP Photo
Volodymyr Zelensky
- Yevgeny Prigozhin
David Cohen
Sun, July 9, 2023 at 8:48 AM CDT·2 min read
In this article:
Volodymyr Zelensky
President of Ukraine since 2019
- Yevgeny Prigozhin
Russian oligarch
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy expressed concern that Russia is planning to destroy the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant because its war with Ukraine is going so poorly.
Speaking via a translator in an interview that aired Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” Zelenskyy said: “Can we, while analyzing this, think that Russia is planning a local explosion in order to stop Ukrainian operations on the battlefield? Yes.”
He said of the Russians: “If they are going to lose more initiative than they have lost at the moment, they will make some additional steps in order to make the entire world be afraid of the global nuclear disaster and halt all military actions on the battlefield.”
Russia’s Foreign Ministry on Sunday accused Kyiv of “systematic infliction of damage” to the Zaporizhzhia plant and warned of the possible fallout from a catastrophe there. In the ABC interview, Zelenskyy said Ukraine is prepared for a possible disaster there.
Zelenskyy said he was not particularly concerned that Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin may be back in Russia after leading an aborted rebellion against the authority of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“As of today, he has become a political figure,” he said of Prigozhin. “And this, to me, must have been his primary objective.”
He also said that he was not worried about Prigozhin possibly resuming command of the Wagner Group or bringing some fighters back into the war, given that those soldiers have been unable to defeat Ukraine’s forces so far.
Speaking before the start of a NATO summit that will concern itself at least partially about the war, Zelenskyy said Ukraine remains adamant that will not yield any territory to Russia to end the war, including Crimea, which was seized in 2014.
“No territory,” he told host Martha Raddatz.
Ukraine’s president also said he didn’t see former President Donald Trump’s assertion that he could end the war in a single day as realistic, given that Trump didn’t attempt to fix things between Russia and Ukraine during his presidency.