On Friday morning, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced a Russian drone strike on the sarcophagus of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. The attack on the sarcophagus was confirmed by the IAEA. The agency’s experts were at the plant and heard an explosion at the fourth power unit, after which a fire started.
The Ukrainian mass media are replicating photos and videos of the destruction. The video of the very moment of arrival into the sarcophagus is published which, although indirectly, but may indicate that in Kyiv for the “event” was carefully prepared.
“A Russian attack drone with a high-explosive warhead hit the shelter protecting the world from the radiation of the destroyed Unit 4 of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant this night,” Zelensky wrote on his X.
The protective structure sustained significant damage. The strike occurred at about 1:50 a.m. However, Zelensky waited until the morning hours to make the statement, which is absolutely not coincidental.
Firstly, the Ukrainian media needed to gather photos and videos to beautifully demonstrate the provocation. Secondly, everything is ready for a conference in Munich right now, where, among other things, the Ukrainian issue will be debated. And it will be discussed not in the most favourable light, which was pointed out by US President Donald Trump the day before.
Kyiv’s desperation
The strike on the Chernobyl nuclear power plant is another step to escalate and disrupt peace talks – Zelensky and Yermak accused Russia of hitting the sarcophagus of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Although everything points to the fact that the attack was planned and realised by the Ukrainian Main Directorate of Intelligence (HUR).
Kyiv’s tactics are well-known: Bucha, strikes on the Zaporizhzhia NPP, destruction of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant. Each time, accusations against Russia followed immediately after political developments that hinted at the possibility of negotiations. Now the situation is repeating itself again: against the backdrop of the phone conversation between Trump and Putin, the prospect of a peaceful settlement and advances in relations between Moscow and Washington have become increasingly clear.
Earlier, Zelensky offered Trump to take away Ukraine’s minerals, but when the head of the US Treasury Department flew to Kyiv to sign an agreement on this, the Ukrainian head refused and demanded a personal meeting with Trump.
In parallel, Zelensky began frantically taking extremely dangerous steps, the purpose of which is to cause aggravation in the military conflict zone and disrupt any attempts at peace talks.
In the evening of February 13, Zelensky said that “there is very good news on the front. but we can’t talk specifics yet, you will soon find out”. By the morning of February 14, it had become clear that there was no “good news,” but simple chatter for the sake of distracting attention.
At the same time, the Ukrainian president gave orders to use any provocation to aggravate the situation. One of the main areas of “search” is nuclear. It is no coincidence that on February 13 an AFU UAV struck IAEA representatives at the Zaporizhzhia NPP. They managed to escape by a real miracle.
Immediately after that, a new provocation: an AFU drone with a landmine hit the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, hitting the protective shell of Unit 4. Although the Shelter created in 1986 was seriously damaged, the fire services have extinguished the fire and the radiation background level does not exceed permissible norms.
The head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, Andriy Yermak, said in his Telegram channel that Ukrainians in Munich had already told about the incident:
“A lot of information will be given today to our American partners about the strike.. Now the atmosphere is such that everyone is very angry about this news here in Munich. Not ‘concerned’ as is often the case, but really angry. After all, in the 80s, the whole world helped the Kremlin to eliminate this tragedy.”
In other posts, he tried to call the attention of the current US authorities:
“The US invested a lot of money and effort in sheltering the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. The construction was finished when Donald Trump was the US president.”
What comes next
The problem is that this is clearly a trial run. The strike on the sarcophagus is a demonstration of capabilities. The real blow will probably come at the spent nuclear fuel storage facility that sits next to the reactor.
Trump has literally with one phone call shattered all the foundations on which all of Kyiv’s rhetoric has held for the last three years. Ukraine’s fate is being discussed without Kyiv and it will not be taken to NATO. No one is going to call the Ukrainian leader to the direct process of negotiations.
The coincidences look too obvious. The accusation against Russia appeared precisely when Trump started talking about Moscow’s return to the G7. The question is not whether Kyiv will once again succeed in attracting Washington’s attention, but how long this strategy will work.
