Ukraine's chief prosecutor has accused Russian forces of repeatedly launching missiles and drones along trajectories that bring them dangerously close to the Chornobyl nuclear site and other Ukrainian nuclear facilities, raising the specter of a major accident, according to written remarks provided to Reuters.
Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko outlined what he described as previously unreported military activity in the vicinity of Ukraine's nuclear infrastructure as the country approaches the 40th anniversary of the 1986 Chornobyl disaster. In his account, both the decommissioned Chornobyl power station and the two-reactor Khmelnytskyi nuclear plant in western Ukraine have been directly overflown by Russian hypersonic Kinzhal missiles at various times since Russia's full-scale invasion.
Kravchenko said that radars have detected 35 Kinzhal missiles at distances of around 20 km (12 miles) or closer to either the Chornobyl facility or the Khmelnytskyi plant. Of those 35, he said, 18 missiles passed within about 20 km of both sites on the same flight path. He characterized the pattern of strikes as lacking any clear military rationale and said it appears designed to intimidate.
"Such launches cannot be explained by any military considerations. It is evident that the flights over the nuclear facilities are carried out solely for the purpose of intimidation and terror," Kravchenko said in his written remarks.
Requests for comment to Russia's defence ministry did not receive a response. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) noted it has frequently reported on military activity close to nuclear power plants and on attacks targeting electrical substations that are critical to nuclear safety. The watchdog said its director general, Rafael Grossi, has repeatedly voiced deep concern about the risks posed by these military activities and has called for maximum restraint near nuclear facilities to avoid a nuclear accident.
Technical details about the weaponry were included in Kravchenko's account. The Kinzhal, he noted, is an air-launched hypersonic missile capable of carrying a 500-kilogram warhead and has been prominently promoted by Russian President Vladimir Putin. At a reported speed of 6,500 km per hour, the missile can traverse 5 km in a matter of seconds.
In three separate incidents, Kravchenko said Kinzhal missiles reportedly fell to the ground during flight and impacted within roughly 10 km of the Khmelnytskyi nuclear power plant. He said it was not clear why those missiles came down, but that the wreckage showed no signs they had been intercepted.
Drones, containment breaches and damage assessments
Kravchenko also described a pattern of drone activity near Chornobyl. Since July 2024, when heavier drone attacks on Ukraine began, Ukrainian radars have detected at least 92 Russian drones that flew within a five-kilometre radius of the radiation containment shield installed at Chornobyl. He added that the real number of fly-bys was likely higher because radar tracks can represent multiple aircraft and some drones may not be detected at all.
The containment shield referred to is the structure installed to limit radiation leakage from Reactor No. 4, which exploded on April 26, 1986, triggering a widespread release of radioactive material across Europe. The plant's final operating reactor was shut in 2000. The Chornobyl site was occupied by Russian forces for more than a month during the early weeks of the invasion, when those forces briefly attempted to advance on Kyiv before pulling back.
Kravchenko argued that deliberate flights of drones armed with substantial warheads over a nuclear facility are at minimum extremely irresponsible and signal a disregard for civilian safety far beyond Ukraine's borders. "Deliberate flights of (drones) with a powerful warhead over a nuclear facility are at least extremely irresponsible and indicate a complete disregard ... for the safety of civilians not only in Ukraine, but throughout Europe," he said.
In February of last year, an object that Ukraine identified as a long-range Russian attack drone struck the Chornobyl facility and pierced the radiation containment shield. At the time, the Kremlin denied responsibility, asserting that its forces do not target nuclear infrastructure and suggesting Ukraine may have staged the incident as a "provocation." Ukrainian state prosecutors later assessed the strike was probably deliberate, a conclusion Kravchenko said rested in part on the steep angle at which the object struck the containment shield. He said that in their terminal phase, single-use attack drones with explosives typically dive toward their target and accelerate until impact.
The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development has estimated that repairing the damage to the containment structure would cost at least 500 million euros. The bank warned that without such repair work, "irreversible corrosion" of the structure would begin in four years. In the composition of Kravchenko's remarks, those estimates underscore the economic magnitude of the maintenance and repair task tied to Chornobyl's unique containment infrastructure.
Air defences, geography and operational patterns
Kravchenko suggested that the Russian military may be routing drones over the Chornobyl exclusion zone to exploit gaps in Ukrainian air defence coverage. He noted that Ukraine fields limited air defences to protect a territory roughly twice the size of Italy and focuses those assets close to populated centres and critical infrastructure in order to maximize their protective value against Russian attacks.
By using Chornobyl as a corridor, he said, the Russian military can attempt to avoid denser concentrations of air defence systems that Ukraine deploys elsewhere. The Chornobyl facility is positioned less than 10 km from the border with Belarus and about 100 km from Kyiv, and it is surrounded by an exclusion zone of contaminated wilderness, factors that can shape both the operational calculus and the surveillance picture for incoming aerial threats.
What remains uncertain
Several questions remain unanswered in Kravchenko's account. It is not clear why the three Kinzhal missiles reportedly fell to the ground near Khmelnytskyi - the wreckage did not bear visible signs of interception, and no definitive cause was provided. The number of drone fly-bys near Chornobyl is likely undercounted due to limitations in radar detection and the potential for overlapping tracks to represent multiple aircraft.
Ukraine and international bodies continue to monitor military activity near nuclear facilities closely. The IAEA has publicly urged restraint in operations near nuclear sites to reduce the risk of a nuclear accident. The financial estimate attached to Chornobyl's repairs and the assessment of probable deliberate targeting of the containment shield add urgency to decisions about protecting critical nuclear infrastructure and arranging necessary maintenance.
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