Ukraine says Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered the "preparation of a terrorist attack" at the captured Chernobyl nuclear power plant with the intent of pinning the disaster on Kyiv forces.
"According to the available information — Vladimir Putin ordered the preparation of a terrorist attack at the Chernobyl nuclear station," the defense ministry's main intelligence directorate said in a Facebook post. "The creation of a technological catastrophe is planned ... the responsibility for which the occupiers will try to translate to Ukraine."
"Without getting the desired result from the ground military operation and direct negotiations, Putin is ready to commit to the nuclear blackmail of the world community for the sake of actions to support Ukraine," the statement adds.
A senior U.S. defense official said the accusation couldn't be independently corroborated, reports U.S. News & World Report.
The report comes after the Russian Defense Ministry accused Ukraine of possibly planning a false-flag chemical weapon attack and claimed Ukraine is preparing a provocation using poisonous substances.
A false flag is a political or military action carried out with the intention of blaming an opponent for it and Russia "could be making these claims, these false claims about U.S. and Ukraine work in biodefense, as a way of creating a pretext of their own to perhaps use these kinds of agents in an attack," a senior defense official said Thursday.
Russians seized the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine on Feb. 24. More than 200 workers have been working there at gunpoint since then, reports Fox News.
Chernobyl sits on the shortest route from Belarus to Kyiv, Ukraine's capital, and so runs along a logical line of attack for the Russian forces invading Ukraine.
Western military analysts said that in seizing Chernobyl, Russia was simply using the fastest invasion route from Belarus, an ally of Moscow and a staging ground for Russian troops, to Kyiv.
Chernobyl is the site of one of the world's worst nuclear disasters. In 1986, a nuclear power reactor exploded and burned, "causing irreversible damage to the environment that will last for thousands of years," according to Greenpeace.
Chernobyl's three nuclear reactors were shut down in 2000 and the facility no longer provides energy to Ukraine, but it still needs to be maintained as it undergoes a decommissioning process.
"At the moment, the CAEC [Chernobyl] is completely disconnected from the monitoring systems of the International Atomic Energy Agency," the defense ministry's Main Intelligence Directorate said in the Facebook post. "The station has been disrupted. The resource of existing diesel generators is calculated for 48 hours of security systems to support."
Information from Reuters was used in this report.
Solange Reyner ✉
Solange Reyner is a writer and editor for Newsmax. She has more than 15 years in the journalism industry reporting and covering news, sports and politics.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.