out of eastern ukraine. an explosion in the city held by the russians and this could be the sign of ukrainian effort in their counteroffensive. let s start now with scott mclean. i want to discuss this charge, this accusation from the ukrainians that the russians are actively trying to sabotage the zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. what do we know? it requires a bit of context. the ukrainians aren t offering evidence to back this up. second off, they are saying essentially that they believe that the russians would make this explosion look as if it was ukrainian shelling and they don t believe it was strong enough to actually damage the functioning of a reactor itself. that s number one. the russians are denying that there s any threat to their side. in pfact, the real spokesman is saying, quote, there s a great threat of sabotage by kyiv which can have catastrophic consequences and they ve pointed to the fact that there are
of all of these different systems together, it becomes much more like it does in peacetime, you can easily imagine fire starting a war, which is what may happen at zaporizhzhia and you can imagine that fire knocking out certain situations, and fire crews could try to put out the fire, but when that happened a few months ago, we saw those firefighters were literally shot at, they couldn t get to the plant for a while. now, fortunately the fire a month or so ago was not in the actual reactor itself, but zirch that but given the plant is occupied at the moment, it is highly likely we could see renewed fighting around that plant, and deliberately or inadvertently, one could imagine damage to that plant, or fire,
news that we found is the fire was about 1200 feet away from the reactor itself, saved an enormous disaster of immense proportions here. just 24 hours ago. pop on over to the north, sean, i know you had a question a moment to go to jen about what is happening with this convoy. it is still pretty much stuck where it is, has been for the past several days, but the forces here are outlined in this red area here. and sean, i know our viewers, some of them have seen these pictures online, i know you have come as well, i have seen them the past week, some of the towns in this red portion here have been absolutely annihilated. and i bring that up because here is the capital city of kyiv, and we believe that still the incentive is to go ahead and surround the city with that convoy that stretches roughly right around this area and is holding there at the airport.
caught fire. the reactor itself, there s six reactors there, but no reactor that s on fire so we should say that so it s not at that level of seriousness yet but obviously the threat is significant. and there s mixed reports you mentioned about whether or not the fighting has stopped. certainly the iaea, u.n. s nuclear watchdog said they re gravely concerned that this is taking place and called on all parties to stop the fighting. it s the first time, they say, that this kind of fighting has taken place around an active nuclear power plant and obviously the consequences of something happening, a shell, you know, kind of causing significant damage to one of the reactors, i mean are terrifying. particularly in a country where, you know, chernobyl is located, the scene of the world s worst nuclear accident back in 1986. and so there s a real sort of
russian troops were firing at the plant from all sides. by this point, the international atomic energy agency said that staff inside the plant were trying to mitigate any potential risks. there were plenty. a fire broke out at some point after that, and the mayor said firefighters were unable to actually get to the site because of the fighting there, and he was warning about the potential for a nuclear accident. it turns out the fire itself was actually in an auxiliary building, separate from the actual reactor itself, which had been used for training. the trouble now is that the ukrainians have confirmed that the russians are in charge of that site, in control of that site. they re controlling a checkpoint, and administration building as well. thankfully the folks who know how to operate the site, the staff, are running it right now. joining us now deputy director at the atlantic council, matthew kroenig, he worked at the cia and the