Ukraine's president said Russian troops were holding the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant "hostage" and its safety could not be guaranteed until they left it, while his forces shut the frontline town of Avdiivka as they planned their next move.
Russian troops have occupied the nuclear power plant, Europe's largest, since the early weeks of the invasion of Ukraine and have shown no inclination to relinquish control.
"Holding a nuclear power station hostage for more than a year - this is surely the worst thing that has ever happened in the history of European or world-wide nuclear power," President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address.
He decried the Russian presence as "radiation blackmail".
His comments followed a meeting with Rafael Grossi, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), at the Dnipro hydroelectric power station - northeast of the Zaporizhzhia plant.
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