An evacuation of 1,679 people, including 660 children, has been carried out near the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine, a Moscow-installed official says.
The head of the UN’s nuclear watchdog warned on Saturday that the situation around Europe’s biggest nuclear energy plant has become “potentially dangerous” as Russian officials began evacuating people from nearby areas.
Ukraine is expected to soon start a much-anticipated counteroffensive to retake Russian-held territory, including in the Zaporizhia region.
“[The evacuees] have already been placed in the temporary accommodation centre for residents of the front-line territories of the Zaporizhia region in Berdiansk,” Yevgeny Balitsky, the Russian-installed governor of the Zaporizhia region, said on his Telegram messaging channel.
Berdiansk is a southeastern Ukrainian port city on the coast of the Sea of Azov, which has been occupied by Russia since the early days of Moscow’s invasion on Ukraine in February 2022.