With international observers desperately trying to avert an unprecedented nuclear catastrophe in Europe by calling for an immediate end to the bombing of a nuclear power plant in Ukraine, one Russian statesman has opted for a different approach and decided to threaten loads more nuclear complexes across the continent with further sinister “incidents.”
Moscow and Kyiv have blamed each other for a series of dangerous blasts at the Zaporizhzhia plant in Russian-controlled southern Ukraine this week, the latest in a months-long series of worrying explosions reported at site. The UN has called for a demilitarized zone to be imposed around the plant to avoid disaster, as detonations continued to rip through the plant on Thursday. But while stepping back from the brink of cataclysm might seem like the sensible thing to do, some people just can’t resist a good bit of weapons-grade saber-rattling.
Pulling out all the rhetorical control rods, former Russian president and cavalier psychopath Dmitry Medvedev on Friday decided to up the nuclear ante with an unhinged screed on messaging app Telegram. “It seems like Kyiv scumbags and their Western patrons are ready to orchestrate a new Chernobyl,” Medvedev wrote. “Rockets and shells are falling closer and closer to the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant reactor. They say it's Russia. This is obviously 100 percent nonsense even for the stupid Russophobic public [in the West],” he added.
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Medvedev served as Russian president before Putin in 2008-2012 and he’s been the deputy chairman of his country’s Security Council for the last two years. In whispered conversations in the Kremlin's corridors, he's even touted as a potential successor to Putin. Medvedev presumably drew on all that diplomatic and security expertise when he threatened European leaders with: “Don’t forget that there are nuclear sites in the European Union, too. And incidents are possible there as well.”
His menacing comments Friday follow a pattern of increasing hostility toward the West since Putin’s invasion of Ukraine began in February. Once considered a pro-Western politician, Medvedev has now adopted an altogether more apocalyptic attitude. In May, he even explicitly warned countries sending arms to Ukraine that they were risking an escalation of Putin’s invasion “into a full-scale nuclear war.”
His intervention on the crisis at the Zaporizhzhia plant comes after calls were made at an emergency UN Security Council meeting Thursday for steps to be taken to deescalate the risk of potentially “catastrophic consequences” at the site on Thursday. “This is a serious hour, a grave hour and the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] must be allowed to conduct its mission to Zaporizhzhia as soon as possible,” Rafael Grossi, the agency’s head, said. Alarm about the situation has continued to grow after Energoatom, the plant’s Ukrainian state-run operator, reported five blasts at the site on Thursday. At least one of the strikes occurred near a site where radioactive materials are stored, the operator wrote on Telegram.
