News - Middle East: Russia has called on the West to pressure Kiev to stop bombarding the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station in southeastern Ukraine.

Zaporizhzhia is the largest nuclear power plant in Europe and among the 10 largest in the world. Russian forces seized the plant soon after Moscow launched its ongoing military operation in the ex-Soviet country on February 24. Ukraine accuses Russia of storing heavy weapons in the plant. Moscow accuses Kiev of targeting the facility.

On Monday, the Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov warned during a virtual press conference that the shelling of the plant was “extremely dangerous.”

“The shelling of the territory of the nuclear plant by the Ukrainian armed forces is a potentially extremely dangerous activity... fraught with catastrophic consequences for a vast area, including the territory of Europe,” he told reporters.

Peskov said Moscow expected “the countries that have absolute influence on the Ukrainian leadership to use this influence in order to rule out the continuation of such shelling.”

Russia's Defense Ministry has said the Ukrainian army inflicted damage on a high-voltage power line that provides electricity to nearby regions.

A “power surge” occurred at the station, causing smoke in a switchgear used to protect electrical equipment, it said, adding that firefighters at the scene managed to stop the smoke.

Meanwhile, Yevgeny Balitsky, head of the Russian-installed administration of Zaporizhzhia region, said despite the damage, the plant was working normally.

A day earlier, Russian authorities at the plant, located near the city of Enerhodar, said a strike by Ukrainian forces had damaged administrative buildings inside the complex. “The Ukrainian army carried out an attack with a cluster bomb fired from an Uragan rocket launcher.”

They said the projectiles, purportedly fired by Ukrainian forces, fell within 400 meters of a working reactor. The strike had inflicted damage on some administrative buildings and that it hit a “zone storing used nuclear fuel.”