Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in Southeastern Ukraine near Crimea has faced attack by Russian troops in recent days leaving the facility on fire.
Despite Russian contact with the IAEA in the aftermath, the spokesman for the plant says that Russian troops blocked firefighters from entering the facility to put out the blaze, leaving the fire continuing its destruction.
The plant contains 6 of the country’s 15 total nuclear reactors, and the IAEA claims that there have been no changes yet in radiation output.
Some are speculating that Russia’s assertive movements to take over nuclear facilities that have been labelled as “aggressive” by 27 countries in a resolution asking Russia to stop are designed to remove Ukraines remaining nuclear capacity. Ukraine famously gave up its nuclear weapons in the 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union and returned them to the USSR in exchange to guarantees that Russia would guarantee their territorial integrity, guarantees that Russia no longer holds to be valid.
China was one of the states to vote against that resolution, suggesting that they tacitly support such actions which their neighbors see as destabilizing.
This adds to the discussion regarding China’s degree of support for Russia’s actions, which on one hand mirror the PRC’s threats to invade and annex Taiwan whose sovereignty they don’t recognize. Still, Russia’s actions in Ukraine also contradict the Chinese Communist Party’s overarching goals of both maintaining stability. They also undermine the PRC’s primary foreign policy goal of enshrining the supremacy of non-intervention sovereign states, which the Chinese still consider Ukraine to be.