US remains tight-lipped on Moscow's statement over provocation in Kharkiv Institute

The US Department of Defence offered no comments on the statement by Russia that Ukraine is preparing for provocation using potential radioactive contamination of an area near Kharkiv in east Ukraine. According to the TASS news agency, the Russian Defence Ministry on Monday claimed the Ukrainian Security Forces and the Azov battalion are planning to blow up a reactor at the National Research Center of the Kharkiv Institute of Physics and Technology. The Russian MoD also alleged that Ukraine would then accuse the Russian Armed Forces of launching a missile attack on the experimental nuclear system.

On Sunday, responding to TASS’ request to comment on the statement made by the Russian Defence Ministry, the representative of the US military department said, “I don’t have any to offer to the allegations or comments you stated below”. 

Meanwhile, on the same day, Ukraine’s national security service claimed that the Russian forces fired rockets at the physics institute in Kharkiv, which contains nuclear material and a reactor. According to the Independent, Ukraine’s security service (SBU) said that Russia’s move risks a “large-scale ecological disaster”. It even claimed that Moscow’s forces are firing missiles from truck-mounted “Grad” launchers, which do not have precise targeting, raising concerns that one would go astray.  

Russian forces only 20 miles away from Ukraine’s 2nd-largest nuclear plant 

Notably, the Kharkiv Institute of Physics and Technology houses a nuclear research facility called Neutron Source, in the active zone of which 37 nuclear fuel cells are said to be loaded. It comes just days after a fire broke out at Europe’s largest nuclear power plant while it was captured by Russian forces. Following the attack, the US ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield told the UN delegates the following day that “by the grace of God” the world had “narrowly averted a nuclear catastrophe at the Zaporizhzhia site.

Meanwhile, Thomas-Greenfield, last week, also warned the UN that Moscow’s forces were only 20 miles away from Ukraine’s second-largest nuclear plant in Yuzhnoukrainsk. Moreover, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned that Russian troops - having seized Chernobyl - are advancing on the third nuclear plant. Zelenskyy informed that the Russian forces have encircled Kharkiv, Mykolaiv, Chernihiv and Sumy. 

(Image: AP)