After the withdrawal of Russian troops from the territory of Ukraine, it will take years to investigate what damage they have caused to the Chernobyl land.
In Ukraine today, there are four operating nuclear power plants - these are 15 nuclear units, and all of them are under threat due to Russia's military aggression.
This was stated by President Volodymyr Zelensky, speaking to the Japanese Parliament.
The speech of the head of our state in front of the Parliament of Japan was the first in the history of bilateral relations.
According to Zelensky, although a distance of 8,193 kilometers separates our capitals - an average of 15 hours on a plane - "but there is no distance between our feelings of freedom, between our desires to live, between our aspirations for peace."
The head of state thanked Japan for coming to the rescue immediately after Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
"Japan has become the leader of this position in Asia. You immediately began to work to stop this cruel war that Russia unleashed. You immediately began to work for peace in Ukraine. And therefore in Europe. And this is really important, and it is important for everyone on Earth" Zelensky stressed.
The President noted that everyone knows what Chernobyl is - a nuclear power plant in Ukraine, where a powerful explosion occurred in 1986.
"The release of radiation. The consequences of which were recorded in different parts of the planet. The 30-kilometer zone around the Chernobyl station is still closed. It is dangerous. In the forests that fill the closed zone back then, during the liquidation of the consequences of the explosion at the station, thousands of tons of infected materials, car wreckage, just in the ground," Zelensky said.
At the same time, he stressed that on February 24, Russian armored vehicles drove over this very land, raising radioactive dust into the air.
Zelensky recalled that Russian terrorists seized the Chernobyl nuclear power plant by force of arms.
"Imagine a nuclear power plant where a catastrophe occurred. Confinement closing a destroyed reactor. A working nuclear waste storage facility. Russia has turned this facility into a war arena," Zelensky said.
He noted that Russia uses the closed zone near the Chernobyl nuclear power plant to prepare new attacks against our defense forces.
"After the withdrawal of Russian troops from the territory of Ukraine, it will take years to investigate what damage they caused to Chernobyl land. What burial sites of radioactive materials they damaged. But how radioactive dust spread across the planet," Zelensky said.
He recalled that Russian troops had already fired from tanks and the largest Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Europe.
In addition, the President of Ukraine stated that hundreds of industrial facilities were damaged due to hostilities, and many of them are especially dangerous.
"The shelling threatens gas and oil pipelines, coal mines. The other day, Russian troops also shelled a chemical plant in the Sumy region of Ukraine. There was an ammonia leak. We are being warned about possible chemical attacks, particularly with Zarin gas, as was the case in Syria," Zelensky said.
According to him, one of the main topics for the discussions of world politicians was how to respond if Russia also uses nuclear weapons.
"Any confidence of any person in the world, any country is destroyed," the President of Ukraine summed up.
