Russian Drone Strikes Chernobyl Nuclear Fuel Facility; IAEA Warns Material Stored 'Meters Away' From Impact
A Russian Shahed drone struck a spent fuel storage building at Chernobyl Sunday, causing structural damage near stored nuclear material. Radiation levels remain normal, Ukraine says
A Russian Shahed drone struck a spent nuclear fuel storage facility near the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant on Sunday, causing significant structural damage but no radiation spike, Ukrainian officials and international nuclear authorities confirmed.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russian forces deliberately struck the storage facility in an "extremely vile" attack. "Today, the Russians again struck the special territory around the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. A Shahed hit one of the buildings of the Centralized Spent Fuel Storage Facility," he wrote on X.
The IAEA said the strike caused significant damage to the facility's fuel reception building, including to the facade, windows and doors, with nearby buildings also affected by the blast wave. A small fire triggered by the impact was extinguished within an hour, and no casualties were reported.
Crucially, Ukrainian officials said no spent fuel had been stored in the building at the time of the attack, and monitoring stations confirmed that radiation levels in the surrounding exclusion zone remain within normal limits.
The proximity to stored nuclear material alarmed international watchdogs. IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi called the incident "deeply concerning as it occurred at a facility containing large amounts of nuclear material, held in storage just metres away from the attacked building." The IAEA said a team would visit the site to inspect the damage.
Zelensky described it as an attack on "an extremely critical infrastructure facility" and added: "There is certainly an increase in Russia's brazenness, which long ago went off the charts." Ukraine's foreign ministry and energy ministry were working to brief international partners on the incident.
Russia has not publicly commented on the strike. The Chernobyl attack comes one week after Moscow claimed a Ukrainian drone struck the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southeastern Ukraine, which Russian forces have controlled since the early weeks of the war. Ukraine denied responsibility for that strike.
It is not the first time Chernobyl has been targeted. In February 2025, a Russian Shahed drone damaged the containment arch built over the reactor destroyed in the catastrophic 1986 explosion and meltdown. Russia denied responsibility for that attack as well.